


The Ex-Wives' Club:  When Goddesses Ditch Their Abusive Partners and Turn Their Attentions to The Fairer Sex

by alephthirteen



Category: DCU (Comics), Supergirl (TV 2015), Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Alex Came Out as a Teen, Buckle Up Sexists...Wonder Woman is not Screwing Around, F/F, F/M, Gayness Level Set to ANCIENT GREECE, Gods Don't Deserve Goddesses, Greek Gods are the Worst, Kara was a Problem in High School, Love is Love and This Will Be Enforced By Divine Beings, Poly Relationship, Superhero Comics are Basically Just Modern Greek Myths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2020-02-04 19:01:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 47,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18610576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen
Summary: Mars’ booming laughter rings out over the ruined hall.  He takes Neptune’s lifeless body by the hair and swings.  A third head lands at my feet beside Vulcan's and Jupiter's.Venus burned away to ash when he set fire to the hall.Minerva fought the longest.  She fought him with spear and shield and sword and with knowledge and secrets.  She spoke curses at him, wielding magic forgotten to both men and gods.  She died with his spear in her guts and his sword between her ribs.Mars reaches for his belt.“Hello Diana," he sneers. "I've never taken a virgin goddess before...”That’s when I see her. Venus is wearing the silvery light of the moon around her like a gown and her eyes blaze like the first moments of dawn. Comets dance through her hair and she holds a fistful of newborn stars in her left hand.It's bright.So bright that Mars never notices her picking up his blade...“My name’s Alex.  I guess we're sisters now.”“Venus, goddess of lo—“ she begins, then swallows hard.  “I mean Kara.”“Hello, Kara.”“Are you all right?”Before I realize what’s happening, she has her arms around me.“Thanks for asking me that,” she whispers.





	1. Storms on Olympus

**Author's Note:**

> This story has three inspirations: the movie "First Wives Club", world mythology, and the backstory implied by the movie Wonder Woman (and it's comic book lore).
> 
> Lots of supervillians preach about heroes -- especially Superman -- acting like gods. So I wanted to write a story where they were gods...where the godlike beings in comic books were were not created by chemical spills or crashed spaceships or that sort of thing. They're just old gods who needed a new hobby. Who think that the whole temple / priestesses / posing for statues thing is a major waste of time.
> 
> Let's face it, no one needed to dump their boyfriend and try something new than the ladies of Mount Olympus! I'm sure Diana would have been more than happy to show them about the ways of loving the ladies...
> 
> I started by asking myself some questions:
> 
> What if not only Ares survived the battle described in Wonder Woman?  
> What if the battle hinged not the gods of Olympus, but the goddesses?  
> What if a lover's pact between goddesses brought them back into the world, centuries later?  
> What if Diana Prince was the reincarnation of Diana rather than Zeus' daughter?  
> What if Paradise Island didn't just exist to hide the Amazons but to hide, nurture and empower the still-recovering goddess?  
> What if she survived because her lovers made a pact to make sure one of them walked away from the battle? If one of her lovers gave her life to enable Diana to escape?  
> What if instead of an alien named Superman, it was Apollo, the handsome sun god?  
> What if instead of an alien named Supergirl, it was Venus, who fell to earth from the stars?  
> What if Venus ended up with a foster family when she fell to Earth?  
> What if The Morrigana, three-goddess of battle, fertility and sovereignty, was in the form of a teenage girl...the Head Bitch in Charge at a boarding school, eager to get away from her mother and brother and show them she is no idle heiress?  
> What if the Bats of Gotham were avenging angels rather than rich people in leather costumes?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> # The last chapter titled "CODEX" contains a cast of characters and background information pulled from wikipedia.org and sacred-texts.com 
> 
> # 
> 
> * * *

PROLOGUE

 

 

 **Diana**  

Mars’ booming laughter rings out over the ruined hall.   He takes Neptune’s lifeless body by the hair and swings hard, sawing across bone and sinew and skin with ease.  A third head lands at my feet, eyes turned to the heavens above. 

My huntresses are dead, piled in a heap of broken bodies feathered with arrows.  Venus disappeared into ash when he set fire to the hall.  Juno fled, only to be dragged back by his hounds, blood spurting from her torn-open throat. 

Demeter raged, spending all the energy of the seasons against Mars, until even the motes of dust were encased in ice.  She too would have been cut down if her daughter and son-in-law had not snatched her into the Underworld.

Minerva fought the longest.  She fought him with spear and shield and sword and with knowledge and secrets.  She spoke curses at him and used magic forgotten to men and gods to try to bind him.  She died with his spear in her guts and his sword between her ribs.  Her hands were on his face, burning some awful symbol into his cheeks.  One that blazes still.

“Let’s see what’s so special about a virgin goddess, hmm?” 

I will not die with his cock between my legs.   Nor will I die whimpering.   Which means I have to make him fight me. 

The sliver of moonlight piercing the great hall is just out of reach, just past the edge of my fingertips...until a mirror is placed in the path of the light, bringing it to my hand.  Gleaming, flawless and set into a handle of solid gold. 

Venus’s work. 

I drag myself to my feet and run, managing to make it to my bow before he can catch me.  There’s no time to aim.  I pull back and shoot. 

The shaft misses his gut—where it would have slowed him—but it manages to slip between the iron slats of his armored skirt. He howls in agony and blood splashes the stones a cupful at a time.  I can guess where it landed.  He drops his blade and reaches down to grab his cock with one hand and the arrow in the other so he can pull it out. 

That’s when I see her.  Venus is no longer the fair-skinned maiden rising from the ocean with a smile bowed upon her ruby lips.  She is power and eternity and the wind that blows across the sea of stars.  She was always the blood and seed and flesh of the sky-god, the oldest god there was, but I never saw her embrace it.  She must have left to wrestle her father’s power from him.  Before my eyes is proof that the sky and the cosmos are hers now, not the domain of that weeping eunuch. 

Venus is wearing the silvery light of the moon–-my moon--around her like a gown and her eyes blaze like the first moments of dawn.  Shooting stars dance through her hair and she holds a fistful of newborn stars in her left hand.   They circle around each other, white and yellow and blue and red with little tongues of flame dancing across them. 

So bright it hurts. 

So bright a god’s eyes must look away. 

So bright that Mars never notices her pick up his blade. 

She thrusts up, driving it into his gut between the breastplate and the belt of his skirt.  He manages to get a hand on his knife and slashes it across her throat, spilling the night sky across the floor. 

“No!” I scream. 

“You thought I would spare you?” he bellows.  “Just because I fucked you?” 

As he starts to laugh, she reaches up with shaking fingers and forces her fist into his mouth.  The flames of the stars lick out from between her fingers.  He bites down with a crack of bone and she wails in pain. 

When he spits her hand out, the stars are nowhere to be seen.  He swallowed them.  Mars staggers around.   His sword is forgotten.  Blue flame pierces his belly from within, so bright I must shield my eyes. 

Venus’ body falls to the floor and I drag myself to her, pulling her into my lap. 

“Diana, my love.  I had to save you,” she whispers.  “One last time.” 

Olympus ended in a blast of white flame.  I suppose I died. 

 

... 

 

My eyes are blurry.  I hear a woman’s voice.  Is she singing to me?   

“She is lovely, my queen.” 

“She is, Antiope.  Queen, is it?  What happened to sister?” 

“You became a queen, Hippolyta.  Cruel trick, indeed.  How am I to spar with my sister if I cannot raise a blade to my queen?” 

“We should hold a feast!  The Amazons have been done a great honor.  Venus gave us a home with her dying breath.  The war of the gods is over and our patrons won.” 

“Did they?  When only this one is left?” 

“"I will raise her as my own, Antiope.  I can teach her to charm and write and paint and sing and you can teach her to fight and rule. Teach her the things I never could. She will be Themyscria's princess.  She will want for nothing...and you will have a niece.” 

“Of course.” 

I wish to speak, to beg them for more news, to scream at them for saving me while my beloved—lovely, passionate, tricky Venus—was left to die. I can do none of that.  My eyes may be hazy but I can see my hands. 

The chubby, useless hands of a newborn infant. 


	2. Women of War

**Diana "Prince" | Diana or Artemis**

Trafalgar Square (November 1918)

 

Etta Candy's arms are warm and soft and loving. She shushes me and rubs my shoulders and all of Trafalgar Square fades to a dull buzz. The cheering and the kisses of lovers reunited and the weeping of sons and mothers who had feared for years is a dull gray cloud. Ghosts and fog.

"I'm so sorry about Steve, love."

"Thank you," I sniff.

"Big strong Amazon crying," Etta teases. "The boys tell me artillery barrage didn't even make you duck. Did you fall in love with Steve?"

"After a fashion," I admit. "I never had a brother before."

Etta chuckles.

"I suppose you didn't."

I pull her closer to me, burying my doubts in her pinned-up hair and her soft, plump body. When I first arrived here, I marveled at the shapes of people. Shapes that we never had on Themyscira. Why were some bent over? Old? Fat? Sickly?

My mother's embrace was marble. My aunt's grip on my arm was iron, even as she did. They put strength into me when death came to our shores and before I cut the line and drifted off into the unknown. It reminded me to be strong.

Etta's hug is like warm cotton...enough to hide an ocean of tears. Her friendship lets me be weak and broken.

"Come on then," Etta tuts. "I've made tea...found some of that ice cream you over the moon for. When you're ready...we're going dancing. I found somewhere I think you might like."

She hands me a card with a handwritten message. Nothing but an address and the words "safe among like souls." The symbol Lambda is written on the other side in what seems like lipstick.

"Really?" I tease.

Etta shrugs and smiles that troublesome smile.

_More mischief in her than in Mercury himself._

"War's over. Us eligible girls better get to it…"

 

* * *

**Diana "Prince" | Diana or Artemis**

Ravensbruck, Austria (June 1941) 

 

Moonlight tickles my skin. A dove coos on the tile roof of the nearby tavern.

A stray cat leaps up on to the town's welcome sign.

 

> **_Willkommen in Ravensbruck_ **

Canvas-covered trucks rumble by down the road, carrying sneering murderers with polished thunderbolts on their uniform and lost boys in gray wool, shivering and holding rifles with shaking fingers.

A half-dozen of his Majesty's Finest are laying in the mud beside me, faces smeared with paint and grass glued to their uniforms, the better to hide them. The commander--Harry--sweeps the distance with his binoculars, finding the camp. I can see his mind working in the twitch of his jaw. He's checking each of the towers with their spotlights and scanning the fence-line of barbed wire. He's wondering how on Earth he can get in there with six men...let alone get back out.

He's been told I work with the Special Operations Executive, striking Nazi targets on the continent. I don't think he believed a word of it. There aren't any other women in the Baker Street Irregulars, so I understand his reluctance. Then I recognized the family nose and heard him lead the boys in _God Save the King_ over the channel. What a difference a few words and his singing voice made.

This my fourth raid with Harry.  I like to think he's my friend.

His second in command is Jack.   A foul mouthed whore of a man. He is an excellent shot and has a killer's mind...war is good work for him. I shudder to think what he will do in peacetime.

"You sure about this, Angel?"

_Angel. The same thing Steve called me._

I look back at the photo I took from the 'borrowed' file in the ministry. Blue eyes that even in a prison photo remind me of the moment before a summer storm...the moment just before blue skies go black. A face like a cut diamond. Hair like tiny gold chains, hanging thick around her shoulders.

Beautiful women abound throughout history but this one is too familiar. A combination I've seen only a few times. Every other time I saw the face, I could rule out the wearer.

Joan of Arc was too infatuated with her God...Venus would never profane herself with the sort of god whose priests father bastards while damning the girls who bear them.

Mary Queen of Scots was one I considered until I saw her nick herself with a serving knife. Goddesses dot not bleed.

Perhaps this woman is Venus returned to me at long, long last.

"I can get in there. I have to know..." I sigh. "Know if it's her."

"All this for one woman?" the newest recruit asks. "Load of shite."

"Prime Minister says to follow her, we follow her."

It would be so easy.

I would step from the shadows, arrow made of silver and moonlight trained on the truck's driver.

I would put a shaft through his eye and stop the truck with a fist to the engine.

Their rifle's bullets would ring from my armor.

They would charge me and fall to the crack of my lasso and the cuts of my gladius and blows of my shield.

A sharpshooter would train his rifle on some bit exposed skin and think himself a hero...only to reveal his hiding place to my eyes and my arrows.

A voice beside me snaps me from the fantasy.

"You really going to do this alone? I mean, I heard me uncle's stories from the war and I you're a tough lass but I can't imag-"

"Quiet!"

I put a finger to his lips and nod at the forest.

An owl hoots. It calls up memories...memories of passion snuffed out two thousand years ago.

I aim high and loose a shaft into the trees. It flies on a gentle arc and lands in some pine with a pleasant thump.

Moments later the arrow drops to the ground, transformed. The shaft is iron, each of the feathers replaced with beaten bronze. The craftsmanship positively divine.

_Could it be? My lovers? Alive once more?_

"No. Not alone. I have help."

"Who's that then?" asks the man beside him.

A great horned owl sweeps soundlessly into the hedges three paces from them. Diana grins.

"That is courage, war and wisdom made flesh."

_How foolish Rome was to neuter her. Make her some mild apprentice. I remember how she laughed when the barbarians scaled the walls. How they pled to Mars to save them...forgetting the far cleverer warrior at Jupiter's right hand._

I bow my head and speak the poem in Greek. It may have been put to paper in English but now it bears _my magic_. So they understand every word.

 

> **"Then grasped Athena her father's weapons, which no God save Zeus can lift, and wide Olympus shook. Then swept she clouds and mist together on high; night over earth was poured, haze o'er the sea. Zeus watched, and was right glad as broad heaven's floor rocked 'neath the Goddess's feet, and crashed the sky, as though invincible Zeus rushed forth to war."**

"That is Minerva herself."

"You bloody serious?" a freckle-faced boy asks. "It's an owl, more like."

"Wait here and find out," I joke.

I stand up, sling my bow across my back and sprint towards the hedge.

My heart is hammering in my ribs.  My breathing is a stallion's pant--wild and powerful--tiny clouds filling up the autumn air. The hope that it might be Minerva sparks heat and hunger between my legs. Like a stone pulled from a blacksmith's forge had settled in my belly.

Before I can reach out, there is a flash of golden light and a hail of feathers tickle my cheeks. Broad hands and steely fingers grab my hips and stop my charge surely as a hitting a mountain would.

_There she is._

Minerva is armed and armored, standing a foot taller than the soldiers I brought.  No less fearsome than she was that awful day.  No less beautiful than the last time we made love. Fates, I remember it so well. Her powerful frame pinned my body to the silks of her bed and her thigh slide between my legs. Whenever she moved, it rubbed muscles as hard as stone across my swollen clit.

Her breastplate is shined to a mirrors gleam and laid in with golden trim, laurels and images of epic ballads rendered in loops across her shoulders. Her shield is strapped to one arm and her spear stabbed into the ground beside her.

Even with a full moon I will not be able to see her eyes but I can remember them. Dark as ink. So large and inviting...beckoning my attention like a cool spring in the woods at midnight beckons young lovers.  Those eyes and wine-red lips were the only feature that softened the hard lines of her face and the steely sinews of her neck.

I reach up with shaking fingers and lift the helmet, tossing it aside. Messy waves of silken hair spill out, the tips rugged and uneven. Cut with her dagger, no doubt. A grin parts her lips.

She bows her head and I bow mine, pressing our foreheads so close that some of my tears strike her cheeks now.

A nudge of her cheek on mine hints that I should tilt my head. No sooner have I complied than her lips press my own. Her hand on the back of my head keeps me still and she lashes my lips with her tongue. I part them gladly and she captures my tongue between her lips and suckles it. She knows what that does to me...how weak that makes me and the fires it sets between my legs.

"I needed to know if you were real," I admit.

The tears flow like rain now, cold rivulets of saltwater down my face.

"Diana," she breathes. "My wild one, please...don't weep."

"So long," I babble. "I thought we failed. That Venus was too wounded. That your magic would not take."

"I know. Here I am. I was good to my word, was I not?"

I laugh softly.

"You are."

She curls her hand around her spear and lifts it from the frozen soil. When she jerks it free, I see the muscles of her hand and wrist and I feel _lust_...something that I have denied myself for two thousand years.

"Wait here," I tell the soldiers without turning my face from hers.

"Tell me about this camp, Di."

I shiver.

"It's for women.  Political prisoners. They spoke up against these monsters or they prayed to the wrong god or made love to the wrong person.  So they were taken here to be worked to death or murdered outright."

"You think she is here?" Minerva whispers.

I suck in a shivering breath.

If this woman in the file I was given Venus, something is terribly wrong. She is weakened. Venus could burn this camp, burn these men and scour the nation of Germany from the face of this Earth in the space of a few heartbeats. Burn it away with the fires of the sun. Reverse the heaven's workings and lift the rock it sits on.  Let it drift into the void.  Even in our most wicked games and our bedroom mocking of the Greek tragedies, she could never stand to be bound for more than a few moments.  If she is a prisoner here, it is because she is not Venus...or not fully.

"If it is, she was cursed. Weak. Possibly mortal. She needs our help."

Minerva nods.

"If not, then someone _else_ needs our help."

Her eyes sweep the camp, taking in the searchlights and the barbed wire and the starving prisoners shuffling around like corpses in striped shrouds.

"I see no reason to let this place stand come the dawn. If this is what these men think war is about, I will be _delighted_ to reacquaint them," Minerva growls.

She transforms back to an owl and takes flight, soaring high over the camp. It comforts me that in the moonlight I can see her…even as she flies so high that their rifles could not reach her.

"Where'd she go?" one of the boys asks.

"She's scouting. Pay attention, you twat," Harry scolds. "I ask for soldiers and they give me idiots and whingers."

I return to Harry and his men, dropping to one knee.

He chuckles.

"You and her, huh?"

I smile.

"Among others."

"Others?"

"Ever hear of Venus?"

"Piss off," complains Jack. "She's lying."

I pull the lasso out and lash his wrists with it.

"Tell me about your most shameful memory," I command him.

He shivers.

"When I was a lad, I would sneak next door to watch the vicar's wife. I wanked into her petunias two or three times a day."

The men all laugh as I untie him.

"Why did you tell me that?"

"Because when I was going to lie about it, it felt like my head was on fire."

I bind my own wrists.

"The Lasso of Hestia compels the truth from those bound in it.  Even the gods.   I am Diana, goddess of the hunt. I escaped Olympus on the day it burned. For two thousand years I have walked this Earth, waiting to be reunited with my lost loves."

"So you only like girls, yea?" asks the freckle-faced boy.

I smirk.

"Child, let me tell you a story. When I first came to Olympus, I was not quite a woman but I knew what it was to _want._ I looked at my chambers, at fountains and wine and beds with silk sheets woven with gold and boys waiting on me at dinner and women singing me to sleep. I knew that a snap of the fingers and any one of them would be naked and between my legs."

"Then I laid eyes on Jupiter.  The king. Like a mad dog that grew hands...drinking and fighting and putting his prick everywhere it fit.  So I grabbed a bow, took a dozen friends and fled into the woods the moment night fell."

"I only ate food cooked over campfires and only drank wine stolen from wagons. And it was paradise. My twin brother would visit time to time. One day he brings Venus with him.  Not long after, Venus brings Minerva to talk about my archery.  Train me.  Then they come and say a new goddess was born and she asked to meet me."

"Who?" Harry asks.

"Bellona. Goddess of chaos and destruction."

Harry chuckles.

"If she's handy, I can think of a few things that could do with being destroyed."

I chuckle too, this time. Charlie made me laugh too. Must run in the family.

The freckled boy is lost in thought.

"When this is over, want to come to my granddad's farm?" he asks.

Before I can cuff his head or ask if he heard that bit about only loving women, he catches his error and explains.

"Herd of wild boars in the woods. Sweetest meat I ever tasted."

"Well, we have to win the war first.  I will think about it."

An owl's call sounds from somewhere deep in the woods.

"Get somewhere you can see the road," I tell Harry. "And find some trucks. More the better."

"Aye. Think we can manage that. What's the plan?"

I point to the south.

"There's a castle ten miles that way. High walls, only two doors, huge wine cellar. When I give the signal, blow the gates open and start putting the prisoners on trucks. We'll make for the castle. We'll drink old wine and watch the walls and and hold out until we can disappear."

Harry frowns.

"You're talking about thousands of people. And I doubt the castle's empty."

I grin.

"Leave that to Minerva. It will be empty as a tomb before we can get on the road. Myself and your men will need to get rations but we can work on that tomorrow. There must be a supply depot near here."

"The Krauts aren't going to let us make off with chow by the truckload," Jack complains.

I pat his head like a mother pats a badly-behaved child.

"You haven't seen what I can do. Harry has. What do you think?"

He smiles.

"She can do it… Come on, boys! It'll be a grand story for the girls back home. Let's make sure Hitler pisses blood when he hears about this."


	3. When You Fell From Heaven

**Alex**

Midvale, California (Arrival day)

 

 

I know I’m supposed to be downstairs to meet my new little sister, but I’m not going to do it.  I have some perfectly good, terribly boring, makes-my-eyes-bleed homework to do from my worst teacher.  I’m good.

This is not okay.  She has family — a cousin — so why isn’t she _his_ problem?

“Alex, be reasonable,” my mom hollers up the stairs.

“Mooooooooom!”

“You’re not twelve, Alex!  Get down here or you are grounded until senior year!”

I slap my textbook shut.  Streaky hisses and launches herself under the bed.  The new bed.  The one dad put together for the new sister.  My _replacement_.  I guess even my cat hates me now.

There’s only so much noise I could make in my socks, so I lace up my boots and stomp down the stairs.  I think I scratched the floor.  Good.

Peeking out the front window, I see them.  See him, at least.  Apollo in his tight, shiny metal suit, the silvery plates flashing in the sun and a sunburst laser-etched into the breastplate and filled in with what look like rubies.  Some Latin motto is etched beneath it.  A dark blue cape flaps in the breeze behind him. 

His arms and legs are huge.  He’s like my friend on the track team who does shot put, except he’s got another foot and fifty more pounds.  His black hair swirls around his ears, dancing in the breeze.  When he reaches out to shake my mom’s hand, it’s obvious that his biceps aren’t much smaller than her waist.  I could hide behind him with room for a friend.

My classmates would be so jealous to know I had Apollo on my lawn.  Some will drool when I tell them.  Sure, he’s cute but I am pissed off.  He is leaving his garbage with us.

Half the school thinks he’s really a god.  I’m no idiot...he can’t be.  It’s a code name or something.  Maybe the government gave it to him, maybe it’s a joke with his best friend.  Maybe his boyfriend calls him that and he thinks it’s sweet, so he made the papers do it too. 

Oh.  That is a good one!  Vicki will murder me if I suggest he might be gay.  Thing is, Vicki never does her reading…so she doesn’t know the myths.  If he actually is Apollo, then he’s gay as it gets.

“You can do this, Alex.”

Dad sighs.

He used to laugh when I talked to myself.  I told him that I only do it when I’m stressed, when I feel like my brain is coming unglued from my body.  He hasn’t laughed at it since.  He drives me to therapy and waits there, so I won’t be afraid I’m alone when I get out.

He grabs my shoulder and squeezes.

“It’s all good, champ.  Lots of people have sisters and do just fine.  Those people aren’t like you.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Most people are normal.  They don’t freak out and they don’t stop breathing when they’re scared and they have boyfriends and they go to prom and...  Crap.  I know this feeling.  _Weak, weak, weak_ , it tells me.  I need to go get my meds.

Before I know it, Dad presses one of them into my hands and holds a water bottle out.

“I have to chew it, don’t I?”

These taste awful if you chew them but otherwise it takes hours to kick in.  Mom will probably be pissed at me if I’m still edgy.

“‘Fraid so, kid.”

I pop one in and start chewing...it’s like someone was trying to make a mint but they used floor wax.  Chugging the water helps.

Mom is crouching on the lawn, talking to someone.  Apollo keeps twisting around, trying to talk to someone behind him.  My new sister.  I haven’t seen even a glimpse of her.  Guess I was right about hiding a whole person behind those muscles. 

Finally my mom gets sick of chasing and just sits in the grass.  Sits and waits.

After a long time, someone peeks around.  She is so good looking it is unfair! 

Buttery hair all over her shoulders and her skin looks like cane sugar.  Sparkly and white.  No one at school is ever going to speak to me again.  Great!  One more way she’s going to make my life weirder.  Bet she’s never had a zit.  Ever.  I hate her more than I did ten seconds ago, which is amazing.

Then she looks at me, peeking around her cousin’s knees.  I really feel like an asshole.   She’s crying.  Perfect skin except for scratchy circles under her eyes.  Her nose is chapped and crusted with dried tears.

“I think she just needs someone to be nice to her,” Dad whispers.  “That would go a long way right now.”

I walk out towards her, hands out in front of me.  I hope no one sees.  I look like I’m trying to soothe a stray cat.

“My name’s Alex.”

“Venus, goddess of lo—“ she begins, then swallows hard.  “I mean Kara.”

Her accent is thick.  It sounds French.  Mom says she was found all alone in the woods outside of Boston, naked and crying.  No one could understand her until Apollo got involved.  The moment he tried to hug her, she punched him.  Put him through three humvees and a concrete barricade.  She knocked pretty boy on his ass. Maybe I’ll give her a chance.

“Hello, Kara.”

“Hello, A-Al-Ale-Alex,” she replies, molding the word slowly with her tongue.

She straightens up and walks out from behind her cousin.  She’s taller and leaner than me...or most of the track team.  She’s wearing mom jeans and a plain blue t-shirt, probably something Apollo grabbed in the first store they passed by.   She jumps at every little noise.  The neighbors tossing stuff in their trash cans, the old lady on her porch across the street tapping her feet to the music. 

Everything seems to startle her.  Doesn’t really fit with the mom jeans.   It’s like she's a wild horse–including the amazing mane--that robbed a thrift store. 

Kara looks like someone took a gold medalist and had a movie star give her a makeover.  Her flat stomach, long legs, toned arms and diamond-shaped face are softened by dark blue eyes and golden hair and pale lips.  The shirt is rather conservative so she took her side braid of blonde hair--a honey blonde touched by a red shine--and threw it forward, letting the braid bounce against her breasts as if to say 'hint hint'.  I don't mean to be staring at her but I am.  Like it was a curse.  No one can look at her and then look away.

So I look at her face.  Her skin is pale, almost white.  It's like sugar and like sugar, there's a bit of sparkle to it.  There's a red rash in her eyes and dark rings underneath.  Just like my friend Sarah’s.  Sarah gets beaten up at least twice a week and started cutting herself. If Sarah is any clue, Kara is in a _lot_ of pain.

When I reach out to shake her hand, she looks at it.  Finally she gets it and reaches out and squeezes my hand, little flexes dancing up the muscles of her arm.  When it starts to hurt, I shake my hand and she gets the hint.

“Sorry,” she sniffles.

“It’s fine.  You didn’t hurt me.” 

“Are you all right?”

Before I realize what’s happening, she has her arms around me and she’s kissing my cheeks, one than the other.  Guess I was right about the French thing.

“Thanks for asking me that,” she whispers.

Apollo just stands there, not talking to me, not talking to my mom, not talking to his thirteen-year-old cousin he’s leaving with people who are almost strangers.  His eyes are twisted away, like he’s too afraid to look.  I want to punch him.  I know I’d break my hand but I’m not so sure I care.  Kara looks over her shoulder at him and says something in a weird language. 

He holds out a duffel bag and I snatch it from his hands.  She buries her head in my shirt again and goes back to crying.

“Go away,” I growl.  “You’ve done enough.”

There’s a boom and Apollo is gone.  The grass he was standing on is flattened, probably by the force of his takeoff.  I can smell smoke and there’s a crackling sound like a campfire.

Kara is on top of me with her arms held to her sides, covering me up.

“Girls!” Mom shrieks.

Dad grabs the hose and turns it on us, full force.  Her t-shirt starts to slide off her shoulders.  I grab the sides of the shirt and stretch them back behind her.   Mom comes over and fiddles with Kara’s shirt, tying it into a bunch.  She nods that I can let go and I do, pulling my ash-covered hands away.

Looks like his panicked take-off lit her shirt on fire. 

Another ten seconds and Jake next door would have gotten a real eyeful.  Perv.  Note to self...threaten to kill him earlier than usual this week.

“Good save, Alex.  That was very chivalrous of you,” Dad jokes.

I laugh.  Mom laughs.  Kara’s mouth twitches, just for an instant, into what might be a smile.

Her hair is less amazing when it’s wet.  One tiny thing that’s not perfect.  

We can start there. 

If her big sister can’t take her down a peg, no one can.

 

* * *

**Alex Danvers**

Midvale, California (Arrival Day +1)

 

Something is rustling against the covers.  Damned cat.

I throw my arm over my eyes to keep out the sunlight.

"Five more minutes, Streaky."

"Ah!" Kara screams.  "I didn't know, I swear!"

I move my arm away from my eyes, look over to her bed.  She may have pulled the sheet up but she hid nothing...not even her nipples which look stiff enough to drill through the thin fabric.  Kara's knees are up and she put a pillow under herself and most telling of all, dozens of computer printouts -- photos and articles -- are around her bed, several of them smeared in lipstick.  

"Sorry, sis."

"It's not what it looks like."

I'm pretty proud that I didn't laugh when she said that.

"Let me know when I can turn around, m'kay?"

"Yes.  Thank you."

Before my mind can drift to what that...situation…looked like ten seconds before I turned around, I get an image of Vicki Donahue into my mind's eye and anchor it there.

I remember the last time we camped out together...in the fallow field behind the tennis court.  Rosie Svenson has always let us camp there and never seems interested in why.

Rain pattering at the nylon of the tent.

Vicki curled close to me for warmth...my hopes of keeping the sleeping bag between us dashed.  

Vicki's breath on my neck.

Vicki's hands looped tight over my middle.

Vicki whispering  "Good night, Alex.  Sweet dreams."

Waking to find out I had rolled over.  Her sour-smelling breath on my face, not that I minded.  Not that I _could_ be bothered by something, not if the tradeoff was being nose-to-nose with Vicki.

Her nose scrunching up as she woke.

Vicki stretching nearly bringing her hand onto the front of my sweatpants, where she would have found them soaked.  Her joking about her morning breath and turning away a quarter-second before I could grab her and kiss her.

The way her breasts wiggled under the oversized T-Shirt as she brushed her teeth.  The goosebumps on her legs.

The way she shivered when she asked me to help her with her bra...her fingers too cold and too stiff work the clasps.

Kara clears her throat. Loudly.

"You can turn around, Alex."

"Ugh.  Unfair," I complain.

Kara has thrown on a pale purple sundress, fluffed her hair and tied it into a messy ponytail at the back and scrubbed her pale face to a gleam.  All without leaving the room and more amazingly, without spending hours in a salon.

_Maybe her superpower is fashion?_

Then again, I'm not even sure she has any powers.  Probably not. Why else would Apollo leave her with some nobodies?  Hide his vulnerable cousin in obscurity.

I pick up one of the articles she printed out.  It's about Wonder Woman rescuing a woman who was sailing around the world solo.  She also printed out the entire Wikipedia page and pressed lipstick kisses to some parts of it, including something about a raid on a concentration camp in World War II.

_This is what she flicks the bean to?_

I know for a fact that there are magazine spreads of Wonder Woman she gave before interviews but these are more _New Yorker_ than _Vogue_ or _Cosmopolitan_.  Maybe Kara gets turned on by pretentious interviewers.

"Wonder Woman, huh?"

A ruby-bright flush crawls up her cheeks.

"No."

"Really?"

Kara stiffens.  I could've sworn the floor creaked and the windows rattled.  The birds all took off from the tree outside the window. That I saw with my own eyes.

"No!  That's not her name."

"Oh?"

I lean forward and pat the chair at my study desk.

"We're sisters, or so I am told."

Kara nods.

"Never had one before."

"Me either," I admit.  "But I looked it up online and talking is part of it.  So talk to me, sister."

"Right," Kara sighs.  "You know her now as Wonder Woman or Diana Prince.  But that's all a lie. She's Diana. Just Diana."

"Like Cher?"

"Like Jupiter or Thor or…" she sighs.  "Like me. Like Venus."

I chew my lip.  Telling her that I don't believe in god would be mean with her eyes on the floor and her cheeks red and every bit of her body pleading for something.

 _Acceptance._ I realize. _Pleading for me to listen._

"Okay.  Tell me more."

"It was," Kara pauses.  "I think it was probably about 500 B.C. when I met her.  I knew Apollo...he lived in the palace. One day, he and I are laying around, throwing golden forks at a bust of Jupiter."

"Really?"

"Mmm-hmm.  A hit was a cup of wine and a 'mortal' hit," she explains, making air quotes.  "Was a prize to be determined later. I won, too. Two in the eyes, one in the Adam's Apple.  Apollo only got one in the forehead."

I whistle.

"Clean kill.  What did you win?"

Kara's eyes dampen and she wipes some tears away.  I reach for the kleenex.

"No," she whispers.  "Happy tears."

"He asked me if I knew he had a twin sister.  I told him of course I knew...and that my prize was that I was going to seduce her.  He bet me that I couldn't seduce her, seeing as how she was famously a 'virgin' goddess."

Kara scoffs.

"Please.  Like he thought I would have trouble with that?"

I watch Kara closely...looking for a tic or unfocused eyes or any clue that Kara isn't well.  I'm lucky enough to have a the family video that contains my first breakdown.  Three days in the hospital.  Hell of a way to spend a ninth birthday.    It took a few seconds before dad stopped filming.  Mom tried to hide the tape from from me. My eyes were bloodshot and skin clammy from not sleeping. My motions were jerky and exaggerated and my voice was...weird.   Too excited.

Seeing that tape makes my skin crawl.  Once in a while when I get a good idea for a project, I tape it on my phone and put the video side by side with "the Crazy Tape" and puts crazy on mute.  Just to make sure that the idea is an idea and not a symptom.

Either crazy Kara looks better than normal or this is a happy memory.  She really believes it. All of it...it's real to her and as her big sis, I should let that be enough.

"What happened?"

"He took me into the woods--goddess of the hunt and all--and led me to her campsite.  I sat down with her and drank some wine while she and her little tribe of women cut up the deer.  I don't think either she or Apollo thought I would eat with my bare hands, let alone eat venison still hot from the fire.  I looked at him over my shoulder, took a huge bite and then 'spilled' a little wine on myself. Wanted to see what she'd do."

"Oh?"

Kara laughs.

"She grabs her bow, shoots an arrow into the tree next to his head and tells him to get lost.  Climbs into my lap and kisses me. The way she kissed," Kara sighs.

"It was like nothing else existed.  She kissed my lips and stroked my face and _everything_ was about that.  I didn't even realize how turned on I was until we stopped kissing and I could take a deep breath.  We fucked in the grass. For what must have been days. I was weak with thirst when I made it back to Olympus."

I smile.

"Sounds like fun.  So that's who you think Wonder Woman is?  Your old flame?"

Kara sobs quietly.

"I know she is.  And from these I know she remembers me and I miss her and I have dreamed for centuries about kissing her and none of these say she has another lover and she talks about me in interviews and now I'm here and she's not.  She didn't come for me."

"I don't know why!" Kara sobs.

"Um, because she's a grown woman and you are fifteen?"

She just stares at me.

"That's how it looks.  Even if you both are old enough to remember the invention of dirt...people won't see that.  It's a crime. People would be disgusted by her."

Kara sniffs.

"I guess I wait."

"You could also…" I pause.  "Date other people or do other things."

"You did just hear what I said, right?"

"Kara, sometimes…" I begin.  "Sometimes what we think we wan-"

"It's all true!  Why don't you believe me?" she shouts.

I sit up straight on the bed and open my arms.

"Come here, silly."

She doesn't make eye contact because she's mad but she comes in for the hug anyway.

I sigh.

"Because...it's me.  It's about me. I have a disease where I get really anxious all the time and sometimes I see or feel things that aren't real.  Delusions. And…" I sigh.

"In my world, people who talk about God like he talks back are seen as a bit crazy.  If you say you _are_ god, or a god… _"_

"Goddess.  World of difference."

I chuckle.

"Then people think you're even crazier?" she asks.

"Bingo."

"So...I can't believe you Kara.  Not yet. Because if I do, how do I know it's not because I lost my mind?  And all this God talk has to be a secret, Kara."

"Like in the movies?"

"What movies?"

She points to a stack of DVDs by my computer, more than a dozen of them. All superhero or science fiction.

"Did you watch all those?"

Kara nods.

I do some quick math in my head and realize that she hasn't been in the house long enough.  Those movies put together would take twenty eight hours to watch if a person didn't take any breaks.

Kara hasn't even been here a full half-day...she arrived just before supper and it's not even seven yet.

"Really?"

"Time works differently for me."

"Right," I say with a roll of the eyes.

Kara giggles.

"You look ridiculous when you do that," she snickers.

"So anyway...what about the movies?"

She grabs a Superman movie--one of the obscure ones--and points at the back cover where Clark Kent has his glasses on.

"A secret identity."

"You know those aren't real, right?"

She laughs.

"Yeah.  I know.  But he looks a teensy bit like Apollo."

"Your cousin?"

Kara sighs.

"Nope.  No word for it.  He is Diana's twin and Jupiter's son by some poor woman Jupiter raped but...no relation to me."

"Why no word for it?"

Kara wrinkles her nose.

"Because I was created when Cronos castrated Caelus and threw it in the ocean.  I came to life from the blood or jism or something mixing with the sea.  Swam to the surface.  So I don't really have parents or blood relatives. I would if I had kids, I guess."

"You're pretty girly looking for something made out of someone's balls."

"It was the whole thing, actually."

I make a face.

"Eww."

"Yeah," she agrees.  "Eww."

"So you're a clone...sort of.  Lucky you. I would be sort of weird to sleep with your cousin.  Diana, I mean."

"No!" she squeals.  "We never did that. Diana and me and…"

Kara stops.

"And…" I demand.

"And my other lovers.  No incest.  We kept clear of that.  Not like Jupiter or Neptune or even Gaia.  I was in a relationship with Diana and Athena.  When the war happened, we were courting a fourth.  Never had time."

I sigh.  I could probably get an alternate version of all Greek and Roman history and religion but I have to be in Calculus class in under an hour.

"Well, we need to make you look merely mortal for school and...glasses aren't going to be nearly enough, sis."

"I know," she groans.  "Can you make me ugly...er...normal?"

"Good save," I grumble. 

"We normal...er...ugly people aren't offended at all."

"You're not ugly, Alex.  You just look different from me.  Ugh!  You know what I mean!"

"Yeah, yeah.  I get it.  C'mere. Let's find something a little rattier for your top."

I find my most worn T-Shirt that isn't about to disintegrate and offer it to her.  It's also too big on her leaner, longer frame...though her height does mean it shows some of her abs. So only a partial success.

Kara in a T-Shirt with holes and tears is still amazing looking but not in the same way she was before.  The mom jeans Apollo bought her are the only things that can handle Kara's hips...  We Danvers are skinny gals, my mom and I. 

What Kara was wearing before and more importantly _how_ she moved would have made her walk to homeroom into a runway model's strut.  There's no hiding some things.  The way her hips roll or the way she walks--lazily, like a cat--or pours herself into a chair.  The popular girls with rich daddies and designer wardrobes would have tried to murder Kara before she could tell anyone her name.

Now she just looks messy.  Like the morning after a party, rather than the red carpet...or a puppy rolling around in a leaf pile.

We go into the bathroom and I try to show her how to do her makeup -- what little I know -- and watch her copy everything I do.  

Using nothing but thin air!  

I recommend a sort of gothy shade of purple lipstick and she looks at it and just runs her finger along her lips, leaving a shiny coat of violet lipstick behind which she blots onto a kleenex.  Same thing with eyeshadow and the foundation.

_So...she created matter out of nothing.  That's not possible under the laws of nature.  Is my sister really a god?_

"Girls!" mom hollers.  "School!"

Saved by the bell.


	4. Unusual Tastes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Alex is hit with the gay, Kara knows how to please a girl, drama club gets spicy, sex goddesses are not appropriate for school, Kara gets some love letters and some cash from an unknown source.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GLOSSARY:  
> A list of gods, goddesses and Greek->Roman translations is at the end of the story. Beings will be added as we meet them in the narrative so look back often!
> 
> NOTE:  
> In this AU, some things are different:  
> * Alex comes out in High School. Proximity to a sex/beauty/love goddess who wants her sister happy helps her get herself sorted out sooner.  
> * Kara and Lena meet in boarding school--the one with Roulette that Lena mentioned--and drift apart during their college years.  
> * Alex knows Kara thinks she's Venus but never quite believes it. Too afraid. Alex's atheism is part of her all-logic approach and that is how she's working through her depression and anxiety, so she can't bring herself to believe it. Bringing her sister into her life and having her believe in her is my Kara's version of the "Supergirl vs. staying human conflict" in the show.

**Alex Danvers**

(Midvale, California, Arrival +13 days)

 

I push the door to the girls’ dressing room open and find piles of thrift-store lacy dresses and handmade replicas of old-timey bodices and bustles and gowns. What must be a hundred long stem roses are scattered around the room.

I don’t know why I expected towel hooks and cleats and lockers and showers. That’s my world, not my sister’s.

"Kara?" I whisper.

Jake told me something about ‘a party’ the drama kids were having. Given that I’d already seen four or five boys and over a dozen girls headed this way, all of them acting weird, I took the safe route. I knocked Jake’s skinny ass out cold and put him in his locker. If this _does_ have something to do with Kara, he’s going nowhere near it.

Just as I reach for the door to the backstage area, something thumps against it.

"So good," a female voice groans.

"Right there, right there, right there..." she babbles.

There’s no thumping, no cow-like grunts. This must be girl and a girl or else a guy going down on a girl because there’s not enough motion for anything else.

A high, sharp whine splits the air and hurts my ears.

"Kara!"

My sister’s soft laughter carries through the shitty plywood door. Coming from somewhere _low_ on the other side. Below waist level.

"Nope," I tell myself. "Not my problem."

As I turn to go, Vicki Donahue walks in...stark naked. Which is cruel and unusual punishment. Life was hard enough when I dreamed about what she looked like naked. When I had to curl up with her on our camping trips and sleepovers. When I had to keep my hands in friend places when I wanted more, wanted to kiss her more than I wanted air.

"Alex," she gasps. "I was hoping you’d show up."

My face burns.

"Kara’s giving mustache rides in the next room. You’re welcome to one, I guess. I’m leaving."

"What?" Vicki sniffs. "I’m not here for _her."_

Vicki takes my hands and laces our fingers together.

"It’s funny. I went to Kara to ask for makeup tips and she looks up at me and says ‘Alex loves you and I think you feel the same way.’ In front of everybody."

"Never been so embarrassed!" Vicki groans. "But when I finished crying, I started thinking."

Vicki leans in closer. Everything is Vicki now. The air is Vicki's perfume. The light is the dampness in her eyes—tears—and the sparkle of her lip gloss. Only the tips of her fingers and the soft crush of her breasts against my own...only that exists. Everything else is an illusion.

_This is not real…it’s too good. I’m dead. I got hit by a car on my way to school...I’m in Hell._

"Kara thinks she has magical powers," I babble. "Total bullshit, right?"

_Smooth, Danvers. The girl you’ve crushed on since you were nine is jumping into your arms and you’re trying to cock-block yourself._

"No."

"What?"

"No. They’re real. She heard one of the elementary kids crying about her hamster dying last night. Told her to bring it at lunch. She put on some lipstick, walked over to it, kissed her fingers and pressed her finger to the hamster. Boom! Stinky lives. Kara turns around, huge smile on her face and her lipstick is _glowing._ "

"Stinky?"

Vicki laughs, sending a gust of hot air across my face.

"I didn’t name the little creep, okay? My point is that when your sister tells me she’s a goddess? That’s she actually is Venus? I believe her now. And she gives good advice. She was right. The way I think about you is different. You and me...us...we’re not like other friends. Because you’re not like them."

Vicki’s hand is on the front of my jeans now, tapping at the snaps.

_This is too fast, isn’t it?_

Perhaps it’s not though. I’ve touched her a thousand times, hugged her and held her hand on the walk home and played with her hair while we studied and kissed her cheeks and fixed her bra straps before a teacher saw them and braided her hair and wiped her forehead when she was sick. Sex the only kind of touching I haven’t shared with Vicki.

"I see the way you look at me. That you want me, Alex. I just wasn’t brave enough to want you back. But I have.  I did.  I do."

Words no longer work for me.

"Not here," I finally whisper.

"No?"

"Want it to be private."

Vicki’s hands slither up my body and she cradles my cheeks.

"Sounds romantic."

She kisses me, just for a moment, and squeezes my butt before turning away.

"Our spot in the woods?" she asks over her shoulder.

"Yeah."

"Jog there, Alex."

"What?"

"Jog there. I’ll drive out. But I want you smelling like you when you get there."

"It’s a date."

_Oh my god! It’s a date!_

Vicki goes over to the costume rack and grabs some corseted, half-velvet number probably intended for a school play about Versailles. With a wink to me, she slides it up her body and tries her best to cinch the laces.

"Alex," she commands with a look over her shoulder. "Dress me."

_Yikes, that was hot. Am I into BSDM or something?_

"I can do that," I croak.

I lace it up, bit by bit, asking after each pull if she's in pain. I doubt this thing has the full feature set of a true corset, what with child abuse laws being what they are but it's still wicked tight.

When I get the last lace closed up, I put a kiss on the back of her neck.

"Teeth," she whispers. "Bite me. Gently. On the shoulder."

Judging by the way she grabs my head and mashes it closer to her skin, I wasn't aggressive enough. I move farther up her collarbone, press harder and lash her skin with my tongue before pulling back.

Vicki turns around, adjusting the gown. She fiddles with it long enough that she can probably get away with it dress-code wise but that's really because men are stupid...teachers more so.

They'll see a girl 'acting out' or making herself distinct from her peers by wearing old-timey clothing. I see a collarbone that I want to bite and a throat I want to suck until it bruises and a pair of plump breasts offered up like apples in a basket.

"Well?"

I squeak.

"I'll take that as a yes. Good luck in history," she teases. "See you after."

Vicki leaves in a swish of petticoats. I stare at the wall for a long time.

"Alex."

"Aah!" I shout, wheeling around. "Sorry, Kara."

She tilts her head and smiles at me.

"You really have it bad, don't you? For Vicki."

I nod.

"You didn't…"

She shakes her head.

"Love is an emotion that scares even me, Alex. You can't make it or destroy it or break it. Love just _is..._ even for me. You can find it and clear the way for it or try to block it but no matter if we want it or not, it's there."

I swallow. Hard. Hard enough my parched throat aches.

"So she," I rasp. "Already liked me?"

Kara grins.

"Now you're getting the hang of it. I just looked her dead in the eye, drew myself up straight and told her. Would've worked for a human. I just seem more serious than a human when I'm saying things like that."

"Kara, can you help plan the date?" I beg.

She laughs.

"No. Because what Vicki wants is you to be there and there's no planning that. Just showing up. I swear...speaking as a goddess of love, gay women are the hardest."

"How so?"

"She was in love with you, you were in love with her...both of you completely wrecked by it. Both sure the other one didn't feel the same way. Couple of useless disaster lesbians, if you ask me."

I groan.

"Did you?"

"Get on social media?" Kara jokes.  "You bet your ass.  @TheGoddessVenus. Twitter.  Facebook. Tumblr. Heck, even Reddit.  I even got it verified."

"What?  How?"

"Magic.  Called them up and made them believe it."

I snort.

"Alex, do me a favor. My guests are going to be waking up soon and I kinda need to sneak them out."

I groan.

"How many?"

"Seven. Not at once, I mean, seven total. Sure. But the most at one tim-"

"Stop!" I hiss. "No more details."

"Please help?" she squeaks, batting her eyes.

"Fine. Jeez...put the pout away."

 

* * *

  

**Kara / Venus or Aphrodite**

(Midvale, California -- Arrival +22 days)

 

Eliza's eyes--big, hazel, warm--stare down at me and she brushes a tear from my face. She reminds me so much of Demeter. She too seems to draw on an endless pool of love and kindness.

"I'm sorry sweetie. The school says you can't go back."

"Why?" I moan.

"Because you started an orgy, sweetie."

"Huh?" I begin. 

"I _suppose_ that counted as one...close to it, anyway."

Jeremiah kneels next to the couch. I'm all over: legs in Alex's lap, head in Eliza's, my socks and toes wiggled for the cat's benefit so Streaky has something to hunt.

"We're not judging you sweetie. Other people might, but never us. Right?"

They all seem to answer at once.

"Right, sweetie."  "Of course not, stupid. Your my sister!"

Alex is rubbing my legs. She looks scared too.

_Is there a plan here? One I won't like?_

"It's a great school, sis. I'm actually kind of jea-"

"Alex!" Jeremiah snaps.

"Shit. Sorry, dad."

Eliza pats Alex's knee.

"We have to tell Kara anyway. There's not another school here in town and there really aren't any good boarding schools nearby...your dad and I were stuck. Then we got a letter saying someone donated a full tuition for you...all expenses paid."

Alex grins at me.

"So yeah. Someone's paying for you to go to the most expensive boarding school in the world. They slipped a note into my backpack, too. You must have a really rich ninja for an uncle or something."

"They didn't come together?" I ask.

"Nope.  Not sure why."

"Can I see the letter?" I ask.

Eliza fishes it out of the basket she keeps the mail in.

"It's in French. Can you read it to us, sweetie?"

"Sure, mom."

"I know French!" Alex complains.

"Yeah," I laugh. "I know. You pick up languages more often than you pick up your socks."

"Girls…" Eliza warns.

I flip the letter open with a flourish and read.

* * *

 

**Miss Kara Danvers,**

 

**You are cordially invited to attend Institut Le Rosey, the most discerning institution of learning in Europe. Your benefactor has asked to remain anonymous but assures us that you are able to meet our exacting standards. Please find enclosed a list of textbook and equipment requirements and flight information. Your family may attend your welcoming ceremony but they must depart the next day.**

**"Une École pour la Vie"**

 

**Director Christophe Gudin**

**Institut Le Rosey**

**Château du Rosey, 1180 Rolle, Switzerland**

* * *

 

"Did you guys save the note, too?"

Jeremiah looks at Eliza, who nods.

"Be right back, sweetie. I put it in the safe."

"Why?"

"You'll see."

He comes back with a note written on an ordinary index card and three fat coins.

 _Those are denarius,_ I realize. _And that looks like Latin._

Roman coins and a note written in a dead language. Not something the average rich uncle sends. I realize my throat is dry and I lick my lips just so that I feel something...so that I keep myself glued to the world.  I want this to be from them.  For it to be real.  For it to be their way of saying they remember me and will wait for me.

"May I see the coins?" I ask, my voice so quiet I can barely hear it myself.

Sure enough. Three coins and four blank molds, each coin bearing the tiny notches of different imperial mints. Ephesus. Athens. Rome. The places where Diana's grandest temple, Minerva's and Bellona's once stood.

_It seems they finally made good on their threat to court Bellona._

The last mold--the one without a coin--is from Sparta. I doubt anyone but Diana remembers how I preferred the Spartan image of me. Like the Phoenicians and Assyrians before them, they saw the real me. Passion, in all its forms. They knew I drive men equally to lust and to rage.

A large gem has been set into each coin, held in by some clear, sticky sludge.  Hot glue?  They would fall out with little more than a tickle. I pluck each gem out and rub the remaining glue off.

"Careful!" Eliza scolds.

"It was just hot glue," Alex reminds her.

"The coins are a gift. These, I think, are spending money."

I hold my hand out towards Jeremiah and drop the gems into his.

"I think they're diamonds. Probably worth a lot."

Eliza's eyes flick to his. They are both wondering who sent me so much money. 

All I know is that it's not the person who paid off the school.  The letter smells like a computer printer.  

The note is steeped in pine needles and stag musk and the smells of sweat, leather and the pungent spike of the oil used to grease a sword before sheathing it.  Not something that Eliza or Jeremiah -- or even Alex -- would detect.  They've probably only smelled pine needles.

A reminder for me, something I can press close and breathe late at night when I'm alone. 

"We'll put it in a trust, sweetie. But we'll make sure you have enough while you're there."

"They still love me," I whisper to Alex.

At Alex's begging, I never told Jeremiah or Eliza about Diana or my other lovers. They might find it too weird that two women--grown women, a world famous hero and a diplomat--were in love with their teenage daughter.

"You're pretty lovable as a sister," she teases. "So when you grow up, I'm sure there's a lucky guy or gal out there. I bet grandmother's necklace on it.  This...is for you."

She reaches up and unclasps the necklace she always wears. I think she wear it in the shower.  Ankh.  Naturally. She's such a dramatic little goth bitch, my sister.

"Thanks," I sniff.

"I got something for you too."

I reach into my pocket and hand Alex a whittled dove I made last night.

At the time I was mad at being stuck at home so I whittled to keep my mind sharp and put a knife in my hand. Each dip of the knife I imagined Mars' flesh under the knife, not the wood. His screams. His begging for forgiveness. Forgiveness I can never give. Not for what he did to Minerva, Apollo, and the others. Juno, the heartless bitch that she was, still deserved better than an torn throat and hounds ripping at her guts.

So I carved. Three doves, a thoroughbred mare, some desert cats and a greyhound. Whatever came to mind. I spent all night on it. Alex knows I don't sleep and as long as I keep the sheets pulled up, I can keep my nightlight on.

Never got around to painting the doves. Last night thought it was a trinket. Now I realize it can be a lifeline.

 _ <With dawn, come to life.> _ I command the hunk of oak in a forgotten language.

It's a language that spawned Greek and Latin and dozens of others but the original is a something no one but gods remember.

"Put it by your bed," I tell Alex.  "...and tomorrow morning, try not to scream."

I'll show Alex how to tie a note to a dove's leg in the morning. If she's going to come out to mom and dad and do it right, she might need some advice.

 

* * *

**Kara / Venus or Aphrodite**

(Château du Rosey, Switzerland - Arrival + 27 days)

 

Alex and Eliza hugged me goodbye this morning just after dawn. Only now as the sun sinks past the snow-dusted trees, does the loneliness really close in. Loneliness is one thing I cannot stand, not after drifting for centuries in the void between the stars with only the pain of my knitting bones and healing skin to keep me company.

I smooth the bedspread and flop onto it.

Then the door bangs open. Two girls walk in. Sneering.  I've dealt with queens and empresses by the dozens and stuck-up bitches by the thousands. Hazard of the side job as goddess of beauty.

This woman exudes power and pride and cunning, pushing it into the air as casually as most people breathe.

One is pale and soft and has an ocean of black hair. Her lips are full and the lipstick is a classic crimson shade.  The other is lean and golden skinned with the ghost of a tattoo concealed under a blouse slightly too thin to be within the rules.

"This is her, Ronnie?" the pale girl demands.

"Yeah. You should've canceled her donation, Lee. Just another blonde so-cal girl, probably more plastic in her then brains."

"Northern California," I snarl. "And this…"

I gesture to myself.

"Is organic, ethically sourced…"

I lock eyes with the pale one.

"...and delicious."

A coal-black eyebrow rises on snowy skin. There's a wicked glint in her eyes--her eyes are pale green like polished jade--that I need to know more about.

The dark-skinned one slaps me, then tries to hide her pain as she rubs her damaged hand behind her back. I set my jaw and glare up at her.

"Shut up, barbie doll. No one asked you. I never get why you do this, Lee."

_If I was feeling like myself, I would cut you with a rose thorn...scar you from your tits to your gash._

The tanned one steps back. The pale one doesn't.

"Ronni-"

"Roulette," her friend snaps.

"Roulette, be nice. As to why? Because I can afford it. A few bucks under the table and my last name and maybe...just maybe...someone interesting finally attends this godforsaken place."

I stand up tall and fold my arms.  The pale one is shorter than me, quite a bit shorter.  Deliciously.  If I could boot her friend out, I get the feeling she'd one step closer and dive right into my breasts.  She's craning her neck to keep her focus on my face.

"I'm here, so finally someone did."

I offer my hand to the pale one.

_Lee, if her friend is to be believed._

She takes it and when we connect, there's a moment. Like a circuit closing.  A jolt as intense as the destruction of Olympus or the fire that dances under my skin after that final stroke of Diana's gifted tongue.  A phantom feather tickles my face and I hear three things all at once.  It's like a choir with three voices.  The ring of steel on steel and the screams of men in battle, the wind whistling through a forest at night and a raven's cackling.

"Kara."

"Lena. Miss Manners here is Veronica."

"She doesn't belong here," Veronica grumbles. "You can just tell she's trash. Some trailer trash who did well on a test so she popped up on your algo-algae...your whatever that is on the computer."

"Trash?" Lena laughs.

Her laugh is a husky, smoky sound and paired with that raised eyebrow, it's a sound that doesn't stay in my ears long before moving south and settling low in my belly.

"No, I think not."

 


	5. Growing Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where little girls have two daddies, Clark Kent is a house dad, Bruce is soft, it turns out that using surrogate mothers and immortal sperm donors lead to...unexpected traits, Lena feels like she's forgetting something, history is changed and Kara makes a friend and an enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VOCABULARY:
> 
>  **Gladius (plural: gladii)** \-- Roman short sword, standard weapon of infantry. Weighing roughly two pounds and measuring just under three feet long with a two-and-a-half foot balade with a triangular tip and a thrusting point. Made of steel with a double edge. Sturdy and well suited to a stabbing thrust to the enemy's midsection but also used for cutting or slashing.
> 
>  **Scutum (plura; scuta)** \-- Roman shield, rectangular with a slight backwards-facing that wrapped around the soldier. Typical examples were three feet tall by one and a half feet wide by one foot deep including the curl. Their shape allowed for more flexible formations than the circular shields of the Greek hoplites and their phalanx.
> 
>  **Pila (plural: pila)** \-- Roman javelin used for throwing.
> 
>  **Fasces (plural: fasces)** \-- Symbol of office adopted by Rome from Etruscan culture. A bundle of birch wood rods wrapped around an axe with red ribbon, leaving the blade protruding. The modern Italian word _fascio_ is related and later gave its name to fascism as a political system, though the symbol itself remains on many non-facist seals such as the Great Seal of France, the US Mercury Dime (used until 1945) and in the seal of the United States Senate.
> 
> TRIVIA:  
> The typical equipment of a Roman legionnaire was a _gladius_ (sword), a _scutum_ (shield) and one or two _pila_ (javelins).  
> Kara uses unique gear--naturally--to keep it stylish. Here we see Petal and Stem, two of her weapons. We'll see more as time goes on.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:**  
>  Clark Kent is gay for Bruce Wayne and they have two daughters, conceived via IVF with two different surrogates. Expect to see more of the Kent girls (Bruce is just, so, so smitten, so he changed his name) as the story goes on. Expect to see them chill with their aunties...and in doing so basically hang out on what's left of Olympus!
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:**  
>  In this universe, the gods and other heroes use slightly more poetic names than "Batman" and "Supergirl" so check the codex at the end. In most cases, the heroes will be quite recognizable or have many of their classic traits...but not their Silver Age comic book names.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #3**  
>  The memory is set in the Third Punic war, in the final hours of the siege that ended with the total destruction of Carthage. The Latin translations are via Google Translate so if someone knows better, drop me a comment. Rome saw Minerva (Athena) very differently than the Greeks, putting her below Mars (Ares) while some of the Greek world treated Athena as the female image of war in contrast to Ares as the male image. She was patron of heroic deeds and strategists and preferred by Athens while Ares was popular in Sparta and emphasized rage and power.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #4:**  
>  The girl Minerva kidnaps was into dangerous women so she was **very willing** by the time Minerva found her tent in the army camp. Being deposited in Venus's bed the next morning was just a bonus.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #5:**  
>  The staff I describe here -- "Stem" -- is a _fasces_ in the original, pre-Nazi sense of the word: a symbol of power. Roman legions carried symbols into battle with them, often being ornate weapons. Stem is a solid steel quarterstaff styled after a longstem rose and is also the royal scepter and symbol of Venus' throne. 
> 
> See Codex for details

 

###  **Clark Kent / Apollo**

(Chicago, Illinois – Arrival +25 days)

 

 

The last five minutes are hardest. As long as I go high, I can make it from Manhattan to Lake Michigan in three minutes. It feels like it takes forever once I drop to sea level and head towards the lake shore.

Bruce sold the Michigan Avenue palace his family kept to the Foundation. I remember how he wept when Wayne Manor was destroyed by the Joker. All I had to do was ask and he parted with one of the last of the family's original properties, the ones that date back to the robber baron days.

If I thought I loved him _before_ that…

So home is a little wooden cabin on the north edge of the city.

Coasting to a stop along the waterline a few hundred yards offshore, I cheat...I peek.

Martha is in the rec room, which faces the water. She seems to be in time-out...and as usual, it's on the Instagram stream. If not for the chance to be famous, I have no doubt she would run off.

Her chubby fists are balled up and her little chin is stuck out defiantly at the webcam.

Bruce's helmet is on her lap and a note is pinned to it saying

 

 

 

> **'I filled daddy's gear with hot sauce and criminals laughed at him. I have to wait here until both daddies say I learned my lesson.'**

_Did Bruce forget where I was? She could have been waiting a while..._

Agatha is no doubt tucked away studying, as always. Every shade is drawn and Aggie's door is shut, so I cannot see from here. I scan the house, straining even with my supernatural senses. No luck. When I try to force my will upon the house and make it show me my daughter, it throws me back so hard it dunks me into the lake.

The witch's seals and charms are impregnable. Bruce never did tell me who he hired...only that it was a family friend.

Perhaps…yes.

She left her terrarium uncovered, so I borrow the python's eyes.

My sweet little girl, head down in her homework with headphones in and a dried tear on her cheek. She had to say goodbye to her friends yesterday, not just for the summer, but for the foreseeable future.

Aggie towers over her 'twin'--the girls were born the same year to two different surrogates--by close to two feet. She looks closer to thirteen years old than she does to her actual six years.

If I'd known what sharing my bloodline would do to her, I never would have donated.

Bruce remains convinced the surrogate mother was not fully human herself, perhaps a demigoddess who was unaware of her nature. Given the woman's stature, flawless health and sturdy build, it was a real possibility. Besides, it could hardly be ruled out. Some long-dead foremother seduced or taken by Odin or Zeus or Ra, scattering his divine heritage down millennia of descendant? Not hard to imagine.

Just last Sunday we had to sit Aggie down and explain why she would need to be home-schooled. Schoolyard friends her 'own age' would be teenagers--complete with peer pressure and hormones and poor choices--while she would be the girl who cried in my arms over _Lion King_ and missed the elementary school's naptime _._ At least she is spared the brutality of puberty. Her brilliant mind and her heritage gave her the willpower to avoid becoming a moody, boy-obsessed mess.

She agrees that she needs to wait until she _is_ a teenager to act like one. Aggie looks twice as old as she is...but she's wiser than someone ten times her age. Which will no doubt be a daunting situation for whomever is lucky enough to be her first crush.

Aggie's head turns to face me--to face the python, I remind myself--and she smiles.

"Hi, dad. You know I can do all that stuff too, right?"

"Hi," I reply.

Fatherhood means being so happy to see her smile that I forget that the snake can't talk.

"Leave Delphi alone, dad. She's molting. She needs her sleep."

I break the link and float towards the house, watching Martha's smile grow and grow the closer I get.

As soon as I reach for the sliding door, she throws the helmet off her lap and leaves the timeout chair in a blur of tiny hands and…

**POW!**

It's not Martha the little girl with the green backpack and orange sneakers who wraps herself around my legs...it's Martha the many-winged seraphim whose flaming feathers ignite my slacks, burning away all but the steel of the suit.

Bruce never liked to talk about angels before we took Martha home but once we did, it could hardly be avoided. I didn't care that he was the much-hated fallen angel Sam'ael, or that people called him Satan or that the Vatican trains priests to fight him. I cared that the man I love was crammed into a handicapped seat on the El with me in the middle of the night, each of us transfixed by this tiny, golden-haired girl in his arms. In that moment, the train may as well have been the Elysian fields and the hard plastic seat may as well have been the loveseat at home.

Because what mattered was us and this crazy new thing we were doing.

Martha squeezes my knees with her tiny fingers and her wings wrap around me.

"Hi, daddy."

"Hi, angel."

God may not have done the angels any favors with his treatment of them but the fact that she hugs me with arms and wings alike is nothing to sneeze at.

 

 

As I rummage through the pans and pots, Martha 'supervises' dinner. Rather than unleash her upon an unsuspecting city, I have her counting the carrots because I told her the recipe called for precisely 108 baby carrots.

No doubt if Diana saw me right now, I would never hear the end of it...here I am, armor spattered with broth and my cape spread as a cloth for the noodles while I use one of Bruce's old 'batarangs' to chop potatoes.

I hear the creak of floorboards and not long after the stomping of feet down the stairs and couple of hissed curse words as Aggie tries to make it down safely with her unfamiliar, post-growth-spurt limbs. After managing the last step, she holds her hands out for just a moment to make sure she's balanced.

 _She looks just like Diana did…_ I realize.

I make a mental note to check one more time that Mars, Neptune and Jupiter are truly dead and gone. Perverts like them will _ever_ go near my daughter, whether gods or men.

Aggie puffs to push the black curls off her forehead and ruffles her sisters hair.

"Hi, little sister."

"I'm not little!" Martha hollers. "Same as you."

"Martha," I sigh. "You have to pretend to be the little sister, remember? So that Aggie is safe? Because people won't understand."

"Hmph. Fine. But I get two birthday cakes."

"Hi, sweetie."

Aggie hugs me for just an instant and rests her head on my shoulder.

"Hi, dad."

Nothing like Martha's hugs or even Aggie's hugs a week ago. I think she's trying to make her hugs 'look' appropriate for a teenage girl hugging a grown man. No more of the unabashed cuddliness...another part of her change that will break my heart.

"How's Delphi?"

Aggie shrugs.

"Scaly. Hissy."

"I lost count!" Martha pouts, flinging two fistfuls of carrots into the bowl.

Bruce appears behind Martha and puts his hand on her shoulder. I was aware the basement door was open but I have no idea how he snuck up here completely unseen, unheard and unfelt by either me or the girls. Like many of his tricks, that's something I've never really gotten my head around.

"I'm sure it's fine, honey."

He rolls up his sleeves and joins me at the sink.

"How was it, Clark?"

I shrug.

"Fine. Lois complained. Perry didn't. Jimmy helped me pack up my stuff. People hugged me. Told me to come to the picnics."

"Lois," Bruce chuckles. "Never saw a straight woman _so interested_ in messing with a man she knew was gay."

I sigh.

"I think she really _should_ have had kid brothers. She clearly would have done a great job terrorizing them."

"Sorry I made you quit, Clark."

"You didn't. I chose to. The girls are in school here. Journalism can be done in a home office, your job can't. End of discussion."

Bruce takes my hand.

"Never did figure out why you're so nice to me, Kansas."

"Clearly, I'm only using you to get children," I tease.

Teasing is hard right now because it takes thought and _thinking_ is something hard to do when I'm looking at Bruce, especially when sunset is slipping through the trees and bringing out the honey and whisky tones in his eyes.

My phone rings and I hear Bruce curse in _verbis deus_ which has a very real, very energizing effect on both me and the little bonsai tree on the windowsill, though unlike the tree, I have to wait until the girls are put to bed.

I reach down and peck 'answer' with the tip of my nose.

Bruce rolls his eyes. I shrug and wiggle my fingers, still smeared in beef juices, olive oil and spices.

"Clark?"

"Hello, Diana."

"Is Bruce there?"

"He does have his own phone number...but yes."

Diana sighs.

"Sorry...I...I don't mean to be rude. I'm worried for Venu-for Kara. It's probably nothing but there are some people involved. The Luthors."

"Clark," Bruce warns me.

I look down and see the stainless steel carving knife crumpling in my fist like a tissue.

"The daughter donated tuition to a posh boarding school in Kara's name. So it could be could be nothing or she could be crushing on Kara or it could be a trap trying to lure her in. I need that looked into and quite frankly, I think the Dark Angel might be the person who needs to look into it."

"What? No 'Batman'?" he teases.

"I thought you stopped…didn't you start going by Dark Angel? Redo the armor to take all the bats off? Start using the feathers instead of the bats for knives?"

"I did, I did. I was joking, Diana. Never felt right, taking that name when I didn't come up with it. The actual Batman died a long time ago. Least I can do is acknowledge that."

"Anyway...how can I help?" Bruce asks.

"Venus got herself expelled from school," Diana sighs. "It made the news."

"Sister, I'm sure it hurts but I know she sti-"

"You think I don't know that?" Diana roars.

"I know she loves me. Loves us. That's why it hurts. I want her in my arms more than I want to breathe and whenever I close my eyes I smell her perfume and I feel her skin! I have to wait too," she croaks. "And…" she sniffs.

"Venus was the bravest of us and when I look at the photos of her with her new human family, it breaks my heart. Kara is everything Venus ever was...perhaps more. She took the curse upon herself, saved all of our lives, saved yours. And now she's alone in a foreign country and scared and people are treating her like a little girl…" Diana chokes.

"Like she's no-"

Whatever favor Diana wants will clearly have to wait. Bruce wraps my hand in a dish towel, puts the phone in it and nods to the living room.

 

* * *

###   **Kara / Venus or Aphrodite**

(Château du Rosey, Switzerland -- Arrival + 28 days)

 

 

I managed not to laugh at the guest lecturer in "Appreciating the Classics" who told us all about the Acropolis and the Colosseum and how the Greek and Roman takes on the gods differed.

I let him slander my beloved Diana as if she were some maladjusted, sexless barbarian in the woods.

I let him talk about Athena like she was never more than propaganda for the city that enjoyed her patronage. Athens thrived through her guidance and protection more often than it did on its own merits.

I let him talk about me as if I was a beautician and an advice columnist, not a goddess.

I should have killed him for his disrespect. Fed him to the lions. Order my temple girls to rip him limb from limb and let them ravish each other amid the blood and entrails. I suppose I would need a temple for that. Somewhere in this world, I still have devotees…I can taste their prayers when I breathe deep and close my eyes.

Not laughing wasn't easy, but I managed it.

Next up is history, according to the English rose who has been shepherding me through my first week. It saddens me to look at her. Unless she's careful, she's already lived her life and she doesn't even realize that.

Top notch school. Check. Top notch college. Check. High grade average via hard work or family money, whichever is more expedient. Check.  Job through family connections. Check. Socially acceptable husband. Check. Heirs for the family name. Check. Husband sleeps around. Check. Borderline alcoholism via thousand dollar a bottle wine. Check. Get old and die. Check.

"I can get it from here," I assure her.

I offer my hand.

"Thanks, Priscilla."

"My pleasure."

Before our hands part, I push a spark through my skin and into hers. Time and tabloid newspapers will tell what becomes of it but now at least the poor creature _hungers_ now. Priscilla will want to live at the first opportunity--in flesh or drink or fine food or something--eager to indulge in the itch for pleasure I just put in her. Hopefully it takes her somewhere.

We part ways and I push open the door.

Three empty seats from where I stand sit Lena and Veronica. Veronica's eyes turn my way and I feel her jealousy sizzle on my skin.  The feeling is no doubt supported by her own desire for Lena and more than hateful enough to drive someone to kill.  Potent.  Yet it is a candle flicker compared to the inferno I felt when I touched Lena's hand.

_Insignificant slut!  You should know better...do not challenge me with my own power. I can take her from you. I will take her from you._

She shivers and hides her eyes from me. I'm still not sure if she has some of sliver of divinity in her or if she possesses the Sight or if I'm simply looking at her so angrily that even an ungifted mortal could see what I'm thinking.

I push the door behind me with a tiny click and Lena turns her head too.

She says nothing but she shifts her bookbag to the floor, creating an empty seat.

_Who am I to refuse such a delicious invitation?_

The teacher is a round, balding man named Sylvester Carr, though the students call him Snapper because of his ill temper. An ill temper I am blessedly exempt from. When I wish to be, I'm far too charming to be mad at.

"Ah, Miss Danvers. Welcome. Have a seat wherever you like. As it turns out, you were _exactly_ on time. Impressive."

I settle next to Lena.

"I hear you nearly throttled Denson this morning," she whispers.

"Hmm?"

"Classics."

"Oh, well, he was wrong."

Lena laughs softly.

"Was he?"

"Extremely. If you wished, I could arrange some...tutoring?"

"Direct, aren't you?"

 _"Carpe diem. Carpe mulier."_ < _Seize the day.  Seize the woman._   |  Latin>

Lena runs her little finger along the edge of my hand.

"As it just so happens, I need a second for fencing. And if my little birds tell me the truth, you desperately need refinement. Your behavior at lunch was quite the scandal, my dear."

=====

Lena lowers her mask and flourishes her blade, dropping to a crouch.  The screen hides her ebony ringlets and her jade eyes.  Pity.

She's not the first dark haired beauty with eyes firm as marble to stare me down across the shaft of a sword. A powerful memory of Minerva burns in my mind, hiding everything else my eyes and ears report.

A memory of Carthage's last day.

 

Legions marching in rows straight as their blades. A wall of shields and drawn swords readied for a quick jab, a barrage of javelins cutting down hordes of screaming.  The line holding and breaking the enemy's infantry and formations of cavalry and even the mighty elephants. Some clever Carthaginian put three of his elephants abreast, stacked them with archers and spearmen and advanced them carefully to the Roman lines, raining arrows and spears to soften the legion before hitting them at a gallop. A half dozen crazed screamers dismounted each beast and set fire to a Roman artillery cache, blowing themselves to bits and scattering pots of flaming oil along the rear of the line.

By the time the elephants and their riders were dispatched, the damage was done. There was a break in the line and cavalry had ridden through it, their chargers leaping the flames, hooves kicking up dust and scimitars spraying the dirt with Roman blood.  What had been a strong line of soldiers is now a broken horseshoe with enemy walls to the north and enemy cavalry harassing the southern edge.

Amid it all, the general Scipio Aemilianus bellowing at his men.

_"Teneat! Mittent eos retro! Nam Romam!"_

_< Hold! Throw them back! For Rome!  _|Latin _>_

Minerva was there, an owl swooping over the carnage. She had been stalking a woman in the ranks...a favor to me. I wanted to meet this maid who had strapped armor and sandals to her svelte body and marched to war. I wanted to know if her gash had the same flavor as Minerva's, tangy like iron and salt.

Once more, the general derided his men, holding aloft the legion's flag.

_"An non est dignum?"_

_< Is no one worthy?   _|  Latin>

The girl must have been about to volunteer. Before she could, an owl's feather struck the ground like an arrow. Minerva batted the girl aside with the shaft of her spear, towering over the general. Even armored and helmeted, hidden from her hair to her knees in steel and brass, there was no mistaking her for a man. Her wide hips, her smooth skin and that tangle of black curls she never fully concealed always gave her away.

As laughter rippled through the ranks at this strange giantess, she hefted a wagon wheel and flung it like a disqus, crushing one of the enemy's horses.

 _"Axios!"_ She bellowed. 

 _ _< I am worthy! __ |  Greek _ _ _>___

She never explained why she answered in Greek. Perhaps it was instinct.

They had prayed to Mars, calling on him to discipline their ranks and harden their courage and instead they had been graced by Athena...no less a warrior but without his gluttony or his madness and more dangerous for it. The patron of heroes, the strategist, the only equal Zeus had upon Olympus. The were witnessing what she _really_ was as the earliest Athenian kings knew her.

Whether in awe of her or in cowardice, they let Minerva lead the remnants of the nearest column into the breach. It was like watching my temple girls dance, with her blade replacing the perfumed ribbon and her armor in place of veils and silks. The way her blade flickered and slid and danced between bodies and found purchase in arteries and hearts and opened men's bellies was fluid, swift, elegant.  Her steel sprayed blood on the sand like a summer squall throws rain on the beach. She barked orders and put her blade to the backs of men who faltered, pushing them back towards the enemy.  With her in the fore, they cut Rome's enemies down as thoroughly and as surely as a mason places stones.

When night fell, the gore of enemies, deserters and cowards ran down her sword in sticky rivers. I woke to a beaming, sweaty Minerva at the foot of my bed with the glassy-eyed, well-fucked girl carried over her shoulder. The would-be legionnaire's armor bore the prints of broad hands and long fingers that had ripped the steel open with inhuman power and left finger marks on her tanned thighs and her slender neck.

 

"Ha!" Lena calls.

I look up at the scoreboard. Three touches. She was victorious and it took less than forty seconds.

"If you can't fight back, I don't think you'll be good practice."

"I was distracted."

"Reset," I call out to the coach.

"Have it your way, Kara."

"Sabers this time," I tell her. "Not foils."

Lena nods.

"All right then."

An assistant puts a different blade in my hand. Heavier. Stiffer. At least it bears a tiny resemblance to an actual weapon. The foil felt like trying to fight with a cooked noodle.

_"En garde!"_

Lena lunges, a series of quick thrusts, clearly expecting to find me with my heads in the clouds. I meet each one quick as I can. She finds herself with my weapon's tip on her vest and her own blade far to the left, blocking a thrust I never made. I'm as surprised as she. Human eyes could never have followed that diversion but hers could have, whether or not she knows it.

_Come on, Lena! You're more than this! I'm sure of it._

Whatever wicked creature I felt when we first shook hands… She was fearsome. Cunning. Deadly. I know in my bones that it was a goddess's fingers that I took in my own. I want to spar with _her_ , spar with all of Lena, not just with this fetching little heiress that the truth hides behind.

"Three matches," she decides. "Whoever wins more matches wins the contest."

"What do I win?"

"Tutoring. Perhaps I'll introduce you to my friends," she jokes.

I shake my head.

"Dinner. Tonight. In my room."

"We shall see."

I push her hard and never see her true self. Moments before the end of the third match, I see a lock of her hair turn rust-red and see indigo warpaint staining her pale cheek and see her eyes turn into a pair of emerald flames. Then I touch and the match ends.  The tantalizing glimpse is gone.  Whatever I brought to the surface recedes.

She pulls her mask off and shakes out her sweaty hair. I want to lay her out on the mat, rip her vest open and suck on every freckle she has until she has as many hickeys as a leopard does spots.  I want to whisper every filthy rhyme ever spoken in a Roman brothel in her ear. I want to blanket her small, succulent body with my own.

"You!" I hear a woman shout. "Get away from her!"

"Veronica! What…"

Lena shrieks.

"Ronnie, don't. Put the gun down, please."

I hear the crack of the gun behind me.

I flick my wrist and the saber fattens, sharpens and curls. Engravings spread along the steel in a jungle of vines and runes that Minerva carved into it. Now it is a proper weapon. It's been ages since Petal and I had an excuse to dance.

A flick of my left hand calls up a steel rod as tall as I topped with a bludgeon sculpted like a bouquet of roses and the shaft spiked with a spiral of razor sharp thorns. My fingers curl tight around Stem's girth and the cool steel of my _fasces_ caresses my skin like an old lover.

I spin to face Veronica. Smoke and flame hangs motionless at the end of the barrel and the bullet hangs just past the last puff, red hot and spinning slowly, like a windmill on a calm day. I take two paces towards her, halving the distance and putting the tip of my blade to the bullet.

My magic fades and the gnarled halves of the bullet fall to the mat, still red hot. Veronica's bloodshot eyes lock on mine and she shrieks in anger. I drop to a crouch, sweeping her legs with the smooth end of the staff and striking her chest with the weighted blossoms at the other.

Stem slams down hard and I put my weight behind her, pinning Veronica's gun hand to the mat. Petal's gleaming edge is a finger's breadth from Veronica's throat.

"Kara!" Lena cries.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Let it go, Veronica."

"Never."

_Fuck._

Perhaps her jealousy was more fevered than I realized.

"I could shatter every bone in your arm or cut your throat. Or both. All with a twitch of my fingers. I won't...not if you drop the gun. No one got hurt. Drop the gun and walk away. Let me have Lena and I'll let you live."

Veronica stares at my face like she expects to find a bullet hole in it. Lena approaches from behind me, holding out her gloved hand with the bullet fragments. Veronica bursts into tears when she sees it. Proof she tried to murder me and proof she never stood a chance.

"Impressive," Lena whispers in my ear. "Not an ordinary girl, are you?"

"Dinner. Tonight. Wear your hair down. I'll show you just how extraordinary I can be."

Lena rests her cheek on my shoulder.

"I don't impress easily."

No one moves until the police arrive and haul Veronica away.


	6. #StopTheBans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Alex and Vicki's sexy time is delayed, Alex learns about communicating, Vicki is told she matters and...that's one way to prevent violent protest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:  
> Hello, my lovelies. This chapter is going to be a slight diversion from the plot. After the awful anti-abortion laws in Georgia, Alabama, Ohio and elsewhere, I decided to put a chapter in each of my various yarns dealing with direct action (by which I mean marches, protests, sit ins, interviews) to defend women's rights and reproductive justice.
> 
> It may not fix the real world but fanfic is all about creating worlds we prefer, isn't it?

 

****

###  **Alex Danvers**

(Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, California – Arrival +28 days)

 

 

My throat feels like sandpaper. I want to apologize but I can't move my vocal cords. The look of disgust on Vicki's face before she ran off...

"Vicki!"

"Go away, Alex!"

So she didn't go far. Maybe I have a chance. I yank the tent flap open, leaving it yawning open.

_Fuck it. Help yourselves, bears._

Vicki is leaning against a rock at the edge of the beach, her arms wrapped tight and her bare thighs shivering. Her cheeks are soaked with tears, mascara running down her face in a dozen places.

_Easy, Alex. No more saying stupid things._

"Vic," I begin.

"No. I get it!" she shouts, throwing her arms wildly. "Who wants to be with the slut with all the diseases, right? I get why you don't want me."

"What?"

_Where the fluffy fuck did she get that idea?_

I would swallow a running chainsaw if it got her to come back to the tent. Two if she kissed me. I'd swallow every sharp object in a hardware store to go back fifteen minutes to where I was on top of her, watching her laugh while I failed miserably at bras.

She wipes her mouth with her hand.

"I'll go, Alex. I'll just go."

_You think you're leaving? At two in the morning, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, naked? Fuck. That. Shit._

She turns away from me and starts trying to wobble up the dirt trail we walked down. I make it to her and get a grip on her wrist before she makes it thirty feet. I'm a track girl, Vicki's a theater girl...and I'm somehow still the dramatic one who overreacts.

"Let me go," she hisses. "I'll scream."

"It is not safe, Vic. If you still hate me in the morning, you can go. If you go up that trail at night and distracted? Better than half odds you break your neck or fall off that rocky part a way's back. I'll rig my bag up outside of the tent, m'kay?"

Her eyes scan the trail, like she's looking for something.

 _She's trying to find it past the first trees,_ I realize. _I cannot let her leave._

"That's probably better," she admits.

"And you're amazing, Victoria Donahue."

"Alex, don't."

"And anyone would be lucky to be with you."

"Alex…"

I hold up my hand.

"Stop, Vic. And what I said to you...it wasn't about that. That is nothing, you hear me?"

I put my hands on her shoulders.

"Nothing. It is nothing to me."

"Why were you so surprised?" she sniffs.

"Uh, a pretty girl was talking to me. A pretty girl just casually talking to me about sex. About what she liked, about what she needed…I think that when you were talking about past partners, my brain was still working on the fact that this was really happening."

"Oh."

"Yeah," I chuckle. "Oh. And as you may have noticed, I spook easy."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yup."

Vicki snickers.

"Really, Alex? Little Miss 'touch my sister and I'll eat your spleen' gets scared? You will drop-kick the quarterback's balls in the hallway but get scared around pretty girls?"

"That's me. I am twenty four seven terrified of you."

She takes the hand I had on her shoulder and moves it down.

"I think…" she sighs. "I think in the morning we should go into town."

"Yeah," I sigh. "Sorry I ruined it."

Vicki grabs both of my hands and pulls me into her, slamming our mouths together. Painfully. She pulls back, working her jaw back and forth and dabbing at her split lip. She's panting and her eyes are locked with mine.

"It's the thought that counts?" she pleads.

"It was passionate, that's for sure."

She laughs. Which does amazing things to her bare breasts and what's more, I think her freckles actually glow in the dark when she smiles.

"Get in the tent already," I grumble.

"You just want to look at my ass."

I swat her.

"I certainly do."

"Fine."

She takes her sweet fucking time getting into the tent, giving me glimpses of lots of shiny, soft, warm things I want. I shuck the windbreaker and running pants I threw on to chase her and zip the bag up three-quarters of the way. There's no way I'm sleeping anywhere else but in her arms.

"How are you going to get in the sleeping bag?" Vicki asks.

"Sexily?" I suggest.

"All right then."

It isn't especially sexy but it we both laugh a lot and we end up with her legs around my waist and my hands in her hair.

"Night, Vic."

"Night, Ally."

We lay there a while. Sleep isn't coming any time soon.

"You'd think this would be easier," she jokes. "How can I sleep with you if I can't, you know…sleep with you?"

"Elves," I mumble. "Magic. Pixie dust. I don't know!"

"Vic," I choke. "We're still…"

"Yes," she purrs, rubbing her cheek on my shoulder. "Very much so."

"Oh. Good. I have an idea then."

"Mmm?"

The vibration from her hum travels her lips and buzzes against my throat. All the air leaves my lungs.

"Let's go to a clinic, tomorrow. Together. We can both get tested, maybe get some safe sex stuff. Because I'm going to have sex with you, Vicki...if humanly possible. And I want it to be something you don't feel guilty about. So let's just both get tested. And while we wait on the results, we can hang out and study and make out and all the other things."

"Really? Asking a doctor that would kill you. You are the worst at talking about that kind of thing!" she teases.

_She's not wrong._

"I know it would be hard. But I'll do it for you, Vic."

"I know. So that'd mean a lot, Alex."

"Remember how you fainted in health class?"

"In my defense, pictures of penises."

Vicki snorts.

"Agree to disagree. I mean, if I didn't have Alex Danvers to play wi--"

I put her left ear between my teeth and scratch her bare back.

"Jesus! Fuuuuck," Vicki groans.

"Alex," she pants. "Stop. If you keep going, I'm doing you right now."

I get an idea.

_What's zero disease risk, hot as hell and will make Vicki feel better?_

"No, let's save that. Get yourself off. And let me watch."

Vicki swallows hard.

"And after?"

"Fair's fair, Vic."

\-----

Vicki's car is warm and the seats are worn and smell like bread...or the attic...something neither clean nor dirty. Familiar. I'm too exhausted to walk straight so she's driving. Her demonstration last night was thorough and I didn't want to miss anything.

"This is a long ways from Midvale," Vicki grumbles. "Don't see why a town Midvale's size doesn't have a Planned Parenthood."

"Yay, sexism," I joke.

"Asshole."

"That's proctologists."

"Weirdo," she grumbles.

"Psychologists."

"Take the next left," I tell her.

"Y'know, the one time I was driving with my ex-boyfriend, he refused to look at a map," Vicki mutters. "So this is new and different."

"Funny how that works."

"I'm guessing that's the place," Vicki sighs.

The clinic is a two story building that looks more like a old firehouse than a doctor's office. Tiny windows and thick, chunky walls made of bright red bricks. The mob of sign-swinging yahoos on the sidewalk remind me that it was probably chosen on purpose. Someone had to decide which building would stand up best to a pipe bomb.

The newspaper mentioned The Gaia Foundation offering free security to women's clinics nationwide but I didn't believe it. I certainly didn't imagine this. Fifty warriors in armor decorated with a brass seal of a dove, a sword and an owl stand just inside the clinic's property line. Each carries a shoulder-height shield and a spear. The two at the corners of the property have brightly painted decorations on their helmets.

"Is there a Dungeons and Dragons convention in town?" Vicki mutters.

"No.  That's the Gaia Foundation's new security."

"Them?" Vicki asks.

"Remember about six months ago when there was that shooting in Kentucky?"

She nods.

"They started this the next day. Not a peep since. Would _you_ want to try and bowl them over?"

"Ooooohkay," Vicki exhales. "So we're just going to walk by a bunch of Amazons going in, just try and slip between a few super-strong, _fucking immortal_ women soldiers from a magic island. They probably have underwear older than the trees in the park. No big deal, right?"

"Right."

Two doors up, the owner of a yoga studio flips her sign to 'closed', zips up her hoodie and locks the door behind her. She heads up the hill, a path which will take her right past the protesters.

"Appointment?" Vicki wonders.

"Lunch break," I decide. "Cafe at the corner. Let's watch."

As she nears the edge of the mob, twenty soldiers drum their shields on the ground and advance together as one wall of metal and muscle, pushing the protesters to the outer edge of the sidewalk. Doing so creates a gap behind them which the yoga lady uses. As she reaches the other side, she turns around and flips the mob off. One man in a plaid shirt with no visible neck shoves against the shield wall, his feet scrabbling on the concrete. The one tangling with him breaks off and one of her sisters fills the gap. Moments later he is slammed against a parked truck, the shaft of the spear held across his back, immobilizing his hands and his arms.

"Denied!" Vicki snickers.

"Hey, Alex."

"Yeah?"

"Have you written your sister yet?"

"No, why?"

Vicki nods at the Amazons.

"Betcha they'd hand deliver a message for Venus's big sister."

She grabs a notepad and an acid green magic marker.

"All I got."

"Thanks, Vic."

She flips through her emails while I write. I fold two blank sheets around the whole thing and glue it shut with some of the perfumed oil Kara left me.

"Ready?"

"Let's go meet the original gangsters."

"Huh?"

"Vic," I joke, ruffling her hair. "Either they're all virgins...or they're all lesbians. No men on the island, remember?"

"When we get up close to the Bible-swingers, kiss me, Alex. Tongue, hands in my shirt, grab my ass. Whatever you like. I feel safe with you. And I really want to see what happens if we do that ten feet from those ladies."

She closes her car door and I follow, offering my arm.

"My lady."

"Weirdo."

"That's psychologists, Vic. Different clinic."

Vicki doesn't laugh at my jokes but she does kiss me for an hour on the sidewalk while a ring of Amazonian steel surrounds us. The protester's shouts aren't even words...nothing can be heard over the drumming of spear-shafts on concrete. I decide that they're cheering for us.


	7. Mad Dragons and Irishmen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where even goddesses overreact, end-times monsters are re-homed, a fighter pilot can't even, Lena flirts by way of nerding out and class is interrupted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **RANT INCOMING!!!**
> 
>  
> 
> So part of what I'm doing here is addressing what I see as a HUGE problem created in the DC movies. 
> 
> if Wonder Woman emerges in 1917, not 1940-41 as she did in the comics...where the fuck was she during World War II? Would she really have been chilling in Athens, making sad noises? That's not who she is and it's not what Steve Trevor asked of her when he sacrificed himself. Zac Synder is literally the only person who thinks Diana would allow the Second World War to happen and not even care. 
> 
> So here is my take on what happens if Wonder Woman is active during World War II: once she sees what's happening, she goes right for the jugular and focuses on stopping the worst of it. 
> 
> I chose 1941 as the point Diana raids Ravensbruck for one very simple reason: the Holocaust didn't grind gradually along at a steady pace. It had peaks and valleys in terms of death toll. Between March 1942 and November 1943, the total number of Jewish people killed was 1.7 million during that period alone ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Reinhard ) The bulk of those deaths -- 1.3 million -- happened in September, October and November 1942. That's twenty five percent of the pre-war population. 
> 
> In January 1942, the majority of European Jews were still alive. By the end of the year, the majority were dead.
> 
> So something that damaged the Nazi war machine before Spring 1942 -- especially a mix of counter-offensive, resistance in the ghettos and disrupted or slowed deportations -- could, in fact, have saved millions. In this canon, Wonder Woman's greatest regret as a hero is not acting earlier. 
> 
> =====
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:**  
>  Mount Taygetus will return. It's where Diana/Minerva/Bellona (and later Venus) have set up Olympus 2.0: smaller, cozier, gayer.
> 
> Diana maintains a Paris apartment, as does Minerva and they keep a shoebox near the UN Headquarters -- no stranger to brushing against each other -- for their diplomatic work. But home for them is Ancient Greece. Taygetus is quite close to Sparta and Cornith, two cities that celebrated Venus in very different ways. Bellona would also have been celebrated in Sparta as Enyo, goddess of chaos and destruction. So it's a compromise location.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:**  
>  If a gay-as-fuck goddess of the wisdom like Minerva showed up at ClexaCon, they would totally make her a throne a la the throne Lexa had in "The 100". Diana would also 100% not open her junk mail (stupid women's fashion magazines!) and space out on things. She's a goddess of passion, the chase and chilling with scantily clad huntresses, not spreadsheets.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #3:**  
>  I'm of the opinion that if pieces fall off your prophecy, it's null and void. Since Lucifer plays around on Earth a lot, he would have zero interest in the End Times obliterating it. So look for other bits of Christian apocalyptic imagery getting misplaced, hidden, given away, "accidentally" listed on eBay, etc.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #4:**  
>  I did way too much research for the bit with the fighter planes. The air base, the squadron name, the aircraft type, those are all accurate, as is the codename for Milan airport. The United States Air Force also has no ace pilots (5 enemy kills) who are female. So I'm creating one.
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #5:**  
>  Kara's anecdote about the Emerald Howlers was meant to lure out another glimpse of The Morrigan. She is going to get Lena to goddess out and own her power if it takes all semester!

**Diana "Prince" / Diana or Artemis**

(Mount Taygetus, Peloponnese region, Greece, Arrival +30 days)

(Altitude 2,404 m / Distance to Sparta 15 km / Distance to Athens, 164 km)

 

I lean back, letting my leaner, lighter frame disappear in Minerva's powerful arms. I may have seen Olympus burn but I am home once more. Or nearly home.

Min presses a kiss to my earlobe.

"I have missed this, my sweet."

"As have I, Min. For twenty centuries, I missed this."

The gnarled and polished hemlock throne on which we sit was a gift...given to Minerva some conference that she spoke at. Unlike most of hers, this was not academic. It was a festival, one celebrating women like us in art...one which produced a thousand photos of fans embracing her and play-fighting her with prop swords and a hundred things that made me laugh.

 _Clexa something_.

I'm told I have an invite too, this year. Unfortunately my pile of unopened mail is taller than Olympus ever was.

In the circle below the thrones, Bellona is sparring with a human woman with a limp. I'll give the mortal credit: she's aggressive. A goddess of pure destruction lunges and rather than dodge, she parries. Then strikes back.

Bellona knocks the blade from her pupils hand.

"That's enough for today, Charlie."

"Hit me again!"

"No. Your injury is not fully healed. Open that wound again," she gestures to the barely-sealed scar. "...and you'll be helpless rather than untrained."

Bel grabs her by the back of the neck and presses their foreheads together.

" _Semper fi,_ Charlie. I'll teach you what I promised."

Charlie sniffles.

"I apologize for my impatience."

"Nothing to apologize for."

Bel climbs the steps and takes her throne. It's black shale , unpolished and roughly hewn. Little more than a square seat cut into an outcropping of rock, one we dug deep into the mountain to find. Some of the edges on the back could no doubt cut skin. Fearsome as she.

Venus' throne sits empty and it breaks my heart. Stainless steel and gold trim, peppered with chromed roses and doves. Taller than any of the others, draped in silk, a bottle of wine chilled beside it...lacking only my lover's body to warm it.

"A few more years, Di," Min reminds me.

Bel chuckles.

"For my part, I'm terrified. The way you two talk about fucking her...and she's gone without for how long? I may be immortal but I'm not sure I can handle that."

I laugh.

"Quite the opposite. The first time she makes love, Bel, it's…it's like watching her peel apart gossamer threads."

One of my attendants dashes into the hall, bow over her back and the chain of her armor clinking as she approaches. She drops to one knee.

"Your worship."

"Speak, woman. You are safe in our service," Min reminds her.

She brandishes a photograph.

"A message for Venus, from her sister."

I leap to my feet, blood heating in my veins.

"If it is a message," I snarl. "Deliver it to her!"

The huntress gulps.

"We did, my goddess. Unopened and sealed. But this is a photo of the cover. I merely thought you might want to know to where."

I snap my fingers and one of my hounds bounds down the stairs, snatches the photo and returns it to me.

"Zeus' balls," I spit. "I must go to her."

I hand the image to Minerva, who reads it while humming thoughtfully.

"I'll make some calls."

"Join me there," I demand, walking off towards the aviary.

=====

Leviathan snoozes in his chamber, six slender necks laced around the larger one. Their smoky snoring puffs hot, potent ash against the crown of spikes that adorns his huge central head. A stack of ox and sheep bones twice my height sits beside him. I run my head along the side of that titanic snout, reaching up as high as I can and still not able to reach the top of the closed jaws.

He's a gift from my brother....well, a regift. Lucifer gave him to Apollo but he didn't really fit with urban life. His presence is a finger in the eye of prophecy. No dragon will be there to fuel Armageddon if Levi is fat and happy and napping under my bedroom.

 _"Vekiĝu,"_ I whisper.

He rises, shaking the whole chamber.

"Who dares?" he rumbles.

"I dare. Diana, patron of hunts."

"Hmph," he snorts, sending a gout of flame onto the floor. "Announce yourself next time, little one. I might've swallowed you."

I chuckle.

"That wouldn't end well for either of us, old friend."

"You ride me, you train for war atop my back…" he grumbles. "But we are not friends."

"Liar."

He huffs again, but he doesn't disagree.

"I found the location of that queen," I tease. "The one with scales like glass. She's injured, but alive. I think she may need a sturdy drake to hunt for her. Perhaps to warm the eggs…"

"Bribery," he snarls. "Simple bribery."

"And?"

"And I remain in your service, huntress. Where are we flying to?"

"Switzerland."

 

* * *

 

**Cmdr. Emily "Haymaker" Thomkins**

(12,000 meters over the Alps)

 

"Alvano, skies are clear."

"Copy that, Buzzard-2."

I yaw the Falcon to the left, glancing down at the snow-capped peaks the Italian-Swiss border. My wingman--so to speak--swoops in on the left side.

"Hell of a view, eh Haymaker?"

"Eat me, Candlestick, over."

_One bar fight. One! And we both get stuck with callsigns from it._

"Ha! Don't think your wife would like that."

"Neither would your husband," I remind her.

This job isn't easy by any stretch...but it has moments. From here I can look down at mountains and watch airliners slowly descend into Milan and Turin and Venice. I can do eight-gee loops over vineyards and scrape the underside of space at twice the speed of sound.

I can enjoy some scenery before we ship back out to Turkey and with it, war. Before I ask Franscesca to pack up and hunker down in the asscrack of Europe where she can't even go off-base without a man to pretend to be her boyfriend. Where I eat breakfast with her and might not be back for dinner.

Something lights up radar, large enough to fill a quarter of the display.

_No way that thing's real. That's the size of a battleship, not an aircraft._

Glancing at the scale...I chuckle and pat the cockpit's rim.

"I love ya, old girl," I tease "But you're getting senile."

"Alvano, we have bogey. I think it's instrument failure. Can you confirm?"

"We can confirm, Buzzard-2. Length 900 feet, speed 250 knots, Altitude 15,000 feet. bearing north-northwest. Estimate Swiss airspace in 6 minutes."

"They're fucking with us, Hay…" Candlestick warns me. "No fucking way it's a real contact. Unless mountains learned to fly."

"Hold that thought, sweetcheeks."

"Asshole," she grumbles.

"Cut the chatter, ladies!" my commander snaps in my ear.

He'll complain but it's not like he's got two other pilots with hundreds of sorties under our belts and air-to-air kills. Next time a terrorist hijacks a news helicopter, I become the first female ace in USAF history. Unless Candlestick has a better trigger finger.

_Here's an idea._

Milan's airport is like any other civilian airport. It's got big, fancy radar for seeing planes and for seeing storm clouds. It also would not be participating in any prank being played on me.

"This is Commander Thomkins, USAF. Fast mover out of Alvano. I am tracking a radar contact. Suspect instrument failure. Traffic control at MXP, can you verify a contact thirty miles due north?"

Someone translates for the radar operator but the answer is in Italian.

Fortunately I know a thing or two about sweet talking dark-eyed Italian girls.

"It's real," I tell Candlestick.

"Hey, slut! Wanna go fight a mountain?" I tease.

"Thought you'd never ask, dyke."

"Alvano, we are moving to intercept."

Shoving the throttle forward, I close the distance in seconds. I wish I hadn't.

Rising up through a wispy fog bank is a dragon the size of a fucking football stadium. It looks like it's made of stone and its scales are cherry red except for a few black ones striped down the back and the head. Well, the _big_ head. The one four times the width of my aircraft with jaws long enough to take two schoolbuses like links of sausage. That massive neck sticks out from the beast's shoulders and six smaller necks with smaller heads are tucked close for aerodynamics.

Sweat trickles down my spine. This reminds me of something back home. Something I would hear read from the Bible before daddy took the strap to me for 'dressing gay'.

_And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads._

"You seeing this, Haymaker? Or did you spike my drink?"

"Seeing it, Candlestick."

"Bulldog-2, report."

"It's a dragon, sir."

"Bulldog-2, cut the crap."

"I repeat, it's a dragon. Big-ass dragon.  It's hot-rod red and real shiny."

Candlestick rolls away and dives under the beast's belly.

"Male dragon," she reports as she loops back to my four o'clock.

_Ugh.  My brain..._

My commander invents several new curses in my ear.

"What is it doing?"

"Unknown...stand by, sir. Moving in for a visual."

_What is that shiny little speck? Radio antenna? I swear to god, if Putin has radio controlled dragons from the fucking Apocalypse, I quit!_

"Haymaker…" my wingwoman warns. "Don't."

"Cover my six."

I get above the thing and gradually go downward, trying to get close enough. Getting smacked by a wing on an upbeat would be like hitting that mountain below me.

_Well. Fuck me._

On top of the beast is Wonder Woman, lashed to the saddle by her lasso, her famous velvet cloak cinched tight around her shoulders.

"Fuck my life. It's a friendly, Alvano."

"Confirm, Bulldog-2. Did you say friendly?"

"Affirmative. Apparently...Wonder Woman has a pet dragon?"

Wondy lifts her gloved hand from under her cloak and shoots me and Candlestick a thumbs-up.

"Can confirm," Candlestick radios the base. "Contact is friendly."

 

* * *

 

**Lena Luthor**

(Château du Rosey, Switzerland -- Arrival + 30 days)

 

Kara has taken to petting my head like I were a kitten, her slender fingers scraping and massaging my skin in lazy little circles. As of yesterday, she's bold enough to do this in class. From outside it probably looks innocent enough: a hand on the back of the head, the occasional whisper in my ear and a too-high, too-airy giggle on her part.

The content of the whispers is something else all together. All of them in Latin. All of them filthy. Celebrating the sacred, the female, the profane.

So here I sit in Snapper's history class, legs crossed and breathing ragged and praying to all gods there are I don't soak right through my skirt -- the panties are a lost cause -- and leave a damp spot on the seat.

 _If mother could see me. If she wanted me to break it off, I would spit in her face,_ I realize. _One does not kick a goddess of love out of bed._

"Miss Luthor!" Snapper snarls.

"Yes, sir?"

"If you're not too high on...whatever you're on, perhaps you could answer the question."

Kara leans in.

"Irregular forces and their significance in World War II."

I clear my throat.

"The most obvious example is of course the Black Foxes," I reply.

Half of my classmates give me stupefied looks.

"Yes, yes…" Snapper grumps. "What of them?"

I snap it shut and fold my hands on my textbook.

"Imagine the war _without them._ In late 1941, before the American entry into the war, the hero we now call Wonder Woman raids the Ravensbruck concentration camp. While the original purpose of the raid remains a British state secret, she disobeys orders and destroys the camp. The result was that 40,000 women were released, the camp was annihilated and hundreds of elite German soldiers died. Over the next two years, a significant fraction of those women joined resistance forces all over the continent. The Free French gained two thousand fighters by Charles de Gaulle's estimate."

"More significantly, it exposed the full horrors of the Nazi regime. Four more strikes by Wonder Woman and another supernatural female soldier followed, completely destroying Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Grini, Buchenwald and coming very close to shuttering Auschwitz itself."

Murmurs fill the room. Larry two rows over has his head hung in prayer. I should go comfort him but his grandfathers both died in the camps while mine donated to Henry Ford's America First and other sympathizers.

"A quarter million human beings are freed in the summer of 1941 alone. They are to speak firsthand to the horrors. Those with interest join the allied war effort, either before or after emigrating to non-occupied countries. The American forces focus on Europe while treating the Pacific as a holding action. By June 1944, a liberated France has sent three regiments to Okinawa."

I inhale sharply.

"Churchill himself said, in his usual way: _'Without that skirt, this war would have lasted to '44 or '45 and killed another million of ours.'_ Then, according to legend, he tried to grab her ass. The quote, however, is verified."

"Furthermore, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center lists Wonder Woman, her unnamed companion, and no fewer than fourteen of her Black Foxes in the Righteous Among the Nations. Some studies, such as Blaskowicz, et al. estimate that the direct interference with Nazi liquidation plans scheduled for 1942 saved one to three million lives."

Snapper harrumphs.

"The obvious example, well described. Fair enough."

Kara's hand shoots up.

"May I, Mister Carr?"

He nods.

_Lucky bitch. He's all over everyone but her._

Honestly, I would've called the goddess of love routine a bluff until I saw her wheedle previously unheard of concessions, perks and privileges from four staff members notorious for being by-the-book.

"The Emerald Howlers," Kara offers.

Snapper hums.

"Obscure reference. Elaborate."

Kara smiles.

"Though Ireland was officially neutral, there are dozens of battlefield reports of an all-Irish irregular force active in the European theatre. Observers report the Howlers often appeared on the battlefield shirtless, sometimes armed with axes or swords in addition to firearms. Most wore some form of warpaint and those who encamped with them reported seeing pagan or neodruidic rituals amongst them. They were singularly aggressive, reckless and willing to take casualties. As such, they were quite successful. Their death toll was extreme but they were pivotal assault troops at three choke-points shortly after the invasion of Normandy and vital to harassing German lines."

I nod towards Kara.

"Most interesting is that it remains undetermined who they reported to, if anyone. Some theorize they were _de facto_ unit composed of veterans and civilians."

"Very good, both of you."

Kara leans in close.

"'Twas England who bade our wild geese go, that small nations might be free…" she croons.

A shiver and a jolt of heat runs from my ears to my core. It's not top secret that I'm an Irish-born bastard of Lionel's but it's not public knowledge either. What confuses me is the near-orgasmic pleasure I get when Kara speaks _Gaelige_ or hums an Irish tune.

There's a knock on the door. Kara's hand tightens on mine so much it's painful. I can hear her teeth chattering.

"Mister...Carr, is it?"

"Yes?" he asks, not looking up.

"Psst!" the entire class hisses.

"Terribly sorry, Ms Prince. Proceed."

Wonder Woman fills in the doorway. The doorway to my classroom. She is glorious.  More beautiful than my libido had ever dreamed possible.  She is armed, armored, and staring right at me. Her lasso hangs from one hand and the hilt of her sword is visible on her left hip.

"I need to speak with Miss Luthor and Miss Danvers. Immediately."

She is staring at me with scarcely hidden rage.

I do the sensible thing. I faint.

=====

I come back to consciousness in Kara's dorm room.

"I sent you a letter saying I was coming."

"Vee, I didn't..."

"Satisfied, Di? Lena's harmless. She's _good!_ "

"Vee…" Wonder Woman stammers.

She stammers.

Diana Prince. Wonder Woman. Feminist icon, motivational speaker, UN envoy and military legend...is stammering stupidly at my girlfriend like she were a closeted thirteen year old whose crush just called her cute for the first time.

_Wait...is that? Fuck._

That's what just happened. She has a crush on Venus. I'd better lock Kara down soon, before Kara grows up and the age gap isn't a barrier.

Kara sighs.

"I know you just wanted to protect me. And thank you. But Lena isn't someone I need protecting from. If you feel the need to storm across Europe on dragon-back, might I suggest an alternate target?"

"For you, beloved, anything."

"I need you to find a wizard," Kara begins. "Destroy a catacomb. Tear down a castle. And kidnap some priests."

Diana nods.

"I'll start tonight."

"Thank you," Kara exhales.

Diana lunges, pulling Kara into her arms and kissing her. Diana's hands clutch Kara's cheeks, she kisses and kisses and kisses... she drinks Kara in. Like a woman dying of thirst.

Kara's startled squeak and whimper quickly dissolves into a throaty moan but Diana doesn't let up. Something much like the Northern Lights plays through Kara's hair and galaxies ignite on the backs of her hands. Diana's eyes fill with moonlight.

 _Jesus Christ...she actually is Diana? The goddess? What the fuck have I gotten into?_ I wonder.

I decide to draw the line at Norse or Egyptian. If Kara's dating Loki or Freya or Bastet or Isis...I'm dumping her.

It's Kara who finally breaks it.

"Di," she gasps. "No. I...I'm with Lena. I can't be with you, not now. It's not my life."

_Not 'never'.  Just not now. Fuck. Definitely need to wife her by twenty-one or so. Get this locked down._

"Go, Diana. Before you do something illegal," Kara teases.

Diana leaves, eyes downcast but half a smile on her face.

"I'm sorry, Lee," Kara sighs. "Boundary issues."

"But you actually love me?" I moan.

"Yes."

"Oh."

I'm not jealous. Or rather, less jealous than I expected.


	8. Heartbreak, Madness and the Silver Screen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Kara learns to keep an ix-nay on the oddess-gay talk when people are around, Alex rescues her sis, Kara oughta be in pictures, and Lena has a no good, very bad day when Lex bombs Metropolis.

##  **Alex Danvers**

(Northampton, Massachusetts – Smith College – Arrival +6 years)

 

I throw open the doors to the administration building, newly-hired lawyer hot on my heels.  If Kara isn't well, these quacks aren't getting anywhere near her. If that means owing a possibly-evil favor to Veronica Cale herself, so be it.

"Can I help you," the undergrad student playing secretary squeaks.

"Patient release." 

I slap my driver's license down.

"Patient name Kara Danvers.  Date of birth 07-04-2000.  I'm her next of  _kin._ "

I snarl the word kin, hoping this little girl thinks real carefully about kinship...about the madness of family. About the Hatfields and McCoys and blood feuds and being willing to fight, kill, even die for your family.

"I'll call ahead," the student replies, swallowing a lump.

Veronica holds up the judge's order.

"No need. Signed and notarized.  Kara Danvers, her medical records and personal belongings are to be turned over to us immediately or we will file suit."

"Yo-Yo-You're...oh my god.  You're Veronica Cale!" the undergrad squeaks.

She practically vaults over the desk and holds out her hand.

"Pre-law.  And you're like, my idol.  Lots of gals. We saw you on TV and we thought maybe we could be lawyers."

Veronica's expertly plucked brow rises.

"Glad to hear it…  But make with the complying, young lady."

=====

I am led into a small room.  Honest-to-god, padded rubber room with a one-way glass panel. 

 "Fucking cavemen."

Kara sits in the corner, straightjacketed.  Her face is raw from crying and no one has even bothered to wipe the dried tears off.  An eBook reader is in front of her in a padded case meant for toddlers. Every few seconds she taps it with her toe.

"Hey, sis." 

"Hi Alex," Kara sniffs.  "I...it just slipped out," she sobs.

_Oh.  She told them who she was._

I'm still not fully sold Kara is Venus...but she certainly has the tricks to make people wonder.  Unless she's drunk and depressed and muttering...without a follow-up miracle, she would just sound like a manic depressive with delusions of grandeur.  

"Lena had just broken up with me.  She screamed. I begged," Kara admits.  "I go out with the girls and I guess...I guess someone at the Scroll and Goblet has a moonshine recipe that approaches ambrosia.  The wine part at least. There aren't a bunch of immortals around so I don't think he figured out the golden apples bit."

"Whatever that drink was, it did the trick. I can't even remember who I told.  I let my guard down.   And I woke up here."

Seeing Kara like this--beaten down, tied up--is breaking my heart.

Kara looks up.

"Can I go home now, please?"

"Of course.  What do I need to do about your classes?" I ask.

"Lost cause.  It happened before the drop-add though so I won't take a GPA hit."

"Of course," I tease.  "That more important than my sister's broken heart…  You mean everything to me, Kara."

"Same, Alex.  The exact same."

An orderly appears with Kara's clothes in a ziploc bag along with her glasses, her iPhone--still in that ridiculous crystal case--and a few other things.  Veronica follows behind him, noiseless in designer heels. Like some sort of runway-ready Grim Reaper ready to take his soul.

From the look on the man's face, she may have threatened just that.

 

* * *

 

##  **Tiffany Silverstein**

(Hollywood, California – Arrival +8 years)

 

"This is ridiculous, sir."  I sigh. "No one just discovers actors anymore."  

My boss--pig that he is--snorts on the other end of the line.

"Worked for the studios for sixty years, kid.  All these A-Listers are stuck up, entitled bitches with saggy tits and brass balls.  I need someone cheaper. Find her."

I take my earpiece off and drop it in the lemonade.  A few pleasant little flickers of blue light announce the death of the circuitry.

I'll drop it on the driveway tonight, give it to my nephew to clean off and return the no-longer-sticky mess as "accidental damage".  A few weeks without that parasite in my ear will do me good.

"More lemonade?" the waitress asks.  "Yours has...not a fly in it but…" 

She pulls out my ruined headset.

"Oh."

She sits down next to me.

"Rough day, huh?"

"Boss is a chauvinist pig.  Wants me to find an actress for a movie because all the professionals have self respect and don't like to be groped."

"Drama classes usually let out at three," the girl muses, glancing not at her watch but at the sun.  "You've got some time."

I lean back at look at her.  Visually, she's everything I need to find.  Hair like melted butter, lips that look plump and glossy even without any lipstick on.  Eyes like the waters off some tropical paradise: a pale and brilliant blue, spiced with a hint of green.  High cheekbones that should sparkle like diamonds, they're so hard-cut.  Skin that looks and probably _tastes_ like sugar... Or maybe it tastes like cocaine. My curiosity grows the longer she holds my gaze.  

Under that apron, I can't see more than that about her but...I think getting her into a nude scene could make me the next Sumner Redstone.  Silverstein Pictures. My name on the letterhead instead of fetching coffee.

"You know what's funny?" I ask.

"What?"

"This works, once in a while."

"What does?" she asks.

"Discovering talent.  Clark Gable suggests to his boss that his golf caddy could be in pictures.  Boom. Movie star. Charlize Theron gets in an argument with a bank teller...talent scout in the back of the room.   Boom. Movie star. Natalie Portman gets spotted by a makeup company scout eating pizza. Boom. Child model. Boom. Movie star."

I sigh.

"But those were the old days.  The studio system, mostly. Back when they needed a pretty face and they'd teach the rest."

"Yeah," she laughs.  "I'm probably not who you need."

I drum my fingers on the table.

"Try me.  Stand up, lose the apron and do a scene.  Whatever school play you remember...what would that be?"

"Hmm…" she muses.

"Romeo and Juliet?"

"Sure, kid."

"Balcony scene?"

She scoffs.

"I played Mercutio."

She whips the unused napkin off my table and takes the chopsticks out of her hair.  She unties the apron and throws it aside. What I saw of her face did not prepare me for the entirety of her. 

She could be the stuff of legend.  

Marilyn Monroe posing for Playboy.  

Lauren Bacall asking Humphrey Bogart if he knows how to whistle, making a legend of a few seconds of her pursed lips.

Hedy Lamarr as Delilah, her inky hair and lazy grace laying him low.

Ursula Andress rising from the beach in the first James Bond flick, changing the way movies handled sex forever.

This girl could be the next goddess in that pantheon.

Hourglass figure.  Her breasts are not huge, but plump and round enough to fill out a gun-moll's ratty T-Shirt in this stupid heist movie.  Make that ratty T-Shirt look like the drape over a Renaissance master's sculpture of Venus. No question. Her hips are broad and her legs are toned but powerful...she's thicker than most of the girls in this town and hotter because of it.  She's closer in build to an athlete than a runway model.  It all works.  Her frame is big and muscular but her posture is easy, lazy, gentle.  Her figure is full but those soft, fleshy expanses are all anyone could ever want in breasts or hips or the swell of a woman's belly.

I've spent face-to-face time with six of the ten Sexiest Women Alive this year, all of them some form of thin.  Thin and tall or thin and tiny or thin and well-endowed or well surgeon-ed.

This girl is right up there.

I flash back five years.  I'm drunk and horny as hell and my room-mate at Stanford has her tongue in my mouth and I'm realizing for the first time--so far, only time--just how amazing another woman's body feels.

_I'm straight, right?_

"You're Benovio."

She brandishes a chopstick at me.

I grin, hoisting myself out of the chair.

"All right."

"Guard thyself, knave," she jokes.  "Ready? Know the piece?"

"Act 3, Scene 1.  I am in show business."

Those glossy pink lips curl into a smile.

 

She whips the chopstick out as if she were drawing a blade.

 

> **"O calm, dishonourable, vile submission! "** She calls out.
> 
> **"Alla stoccata carries it away. "**
> 
> **"Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?"**

She flubs some of next speech but where it counts, she delivers.  Mimicking the blade in her chest, she sinks to her knees. She locks eyes with some phantom only she can see, or else she's just that good.  Tearfully, manfully, she says goodbye to Romeo, her dearest friend.

 

>   **"I am hurt. "**
> 
> **"A plague o' both your houses! I am sped."**
> 
> **"Is he gone, and hath nothing?"**
> 
>  
> 
> **"What?"**  I ask.  **"Art thou hurt?"**
> 
>  
> 
> **"Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough."**
> 
> **"Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon."**

She crumples to the tile, her pen and notepad falling from limp fingers.

"Danvers!" her boss hollers.  "Quit screwing around!"

I rush over to him.

"Danvers, huh? What's her first name?"

"Kara.  She's cute and she brings in business but she's trouble."

"Not anymore she doesn't…"

I reach over the counter and grab the phone by the cash register.  When he starts to complain I flip a business card between my fingers and wiggle it at him.  One with the logo of three different studios and Harvey Weinstein's phone number on it.

"This fucking town," he grumbles.  "Wasn't like this in Chicago."

It only rings twice.

"Yeah?" Harvey grumbles.

"Boss, I found her."

 

* * *

 

##  **Lena Luthor**

(Metropolis, LuthorCorp Tower -- Arrival + 9 years, 153 days until reunion)

 

Soot clings to my jacket, so I shrug it off.

Flecks of blood cling to my hands, so I wash them.  Again and again until my skin is red and opening up.  Blood from people who died while I stood there slack jawed, too shocked to help.  Who died while Lex grinned.

Oily smoke has stained my hair, so I bend over the sink and wash it.

Pulling up and looking at myself in the mirror...I wonder.

_What happened to my mother?  To Lex?_

I knew mental illness ran in the Luthor family but...there's a difference between the upper crust's oddballs and domestic terrorism.

 _Half of me is Lionel,_ I remind myself.   _Won't be too long._

I need to make something of my life before it's too late.  Before the madness waiting in me takes hold.

There's a knock on the door.

"Miss Luthor?"

"Go away."

"I'd rather not, it looks like you could use some company."

I lift my head, ready to threaten this girls livelihood and the livelihood of everyone she loves.  Threaten them all with blacklisting, malnutrition and lack of health insurance.

Glancing at the mirror, I see a petite Asian woman in an immaculate pantsuit.  She holds the clipboard tight but she's holding it out for me, not shielding herself with it.

"I'm Jessica Haung, your new assistant."

She frowns.  Her eyes drift to the liquor cabinet.

"I cannot imagine what sort of day you're having.  If you need me for _anything,_ I'll do it.  No questions.  No judgement."

"Why are you doing this?" I croak.

"Beg pardon?"

"Why are you working here?  You know what we are. Monsters."

"I worked with your brother for a few weeks, ma'am.  He was…a man with issues. Issues I saw him fight and try to manage.  For now, the issues won the fight. Nothing more. He's unwell, not evil."

Jessica smiles at me.

"You're going to do amazing things here, I think.  When you're ready tomorrow, I can run you through the changes between Chief Technical and Chief Executive."

I swallow hard and turn away from the woman in the mirror.  This banshee with green eyes and gaunt cheeks.

My life is already over.  Now and forever, I'm Lex Luthor's sister.  No escaping, no improving, no making my own mark.

I may as well be a corpse.  I will be, once my heart health and my mental health catch up to each other.

 


	9. Take Your Daughter to Work Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we catch up with the Wayne Kent girls as they take two internships that demonstrate a "Parent Trap" level of teenage girl-scheming, we learn what Amazons do for take-your-daughter to work day, seeing as how men are unnecessary for BOTH pleasure and procreation on Themyscira, supervillian-level evil genius and adorable miscreant Ruby Arias appears, we meet little Skylar Donahue who most definitely IS NOT SUPPOSED to be hanging out with Alex's new girl at her workplace but totally is, and little Rachel Quinn is walked through the finer points of crime (tip one: comfy shoes for mid-air acrobatics!) by one of her "cattier" moms.

##  **Lena Luthor**

(L-Tech Campus, Los Angeles -- Arrival + 10 years,  63 days until reunion)

 

I pull slowly, memories of my last bad stick like bright red strobe lights in my head.  The line slides out of my wrist and I follow the wound track with the stimulator, gentle heat and ultrasonic vibration and a spritz of bio-reactive gel sealing the hole and filling the vein so it cannot collapse or scar.

 _WIRED_ called it the greatest first aid invention since the band-aid, children's hospitals have already ordered more than we can produce this year...and I created it to hide my needle tracks.  I'm not sure what's worse: that fact or saline and IV nutrients being my drug of choice.

There are three knocks on my door.  Two in quick sequence and one spaced out.  Jess.  

"Come in, Jess."

"Morning, Miss Luthor.  How are you?"

"Fine."

"Lena…"

I may not know who my birth mother is but I know who can drag the truth out of me the most easily and shame me into self-care.  Jessica Haung.  

She leans over the trash can, poking the false bottom with the faint etching of a biohazard logo with her pencil.  Satisfied that I actually injected the whole bag, she sets her planner on my desk and smooths her jacket.

"I haven't lost any more weight," I promise her.

"Hmph.  Besides the weight you lost since the day we met?  When was the last time you ate something real?"

"Besides that weight," I sigh. "And I cannot remember."

"May I?" she asks, glancing at the chair on the other side of my desk.

There are three guest chairs, two of which are identical to the ones throughout the C-Suite and once which is plainer, more basic and mostly aluminum but also a foot taller than the others.  It's up there so my secretary can see over-the-shoulder to easily transcribe documents brought in, I tell people.

If the mere presence of Jessica in that high backed stool, perched higher than everyone else like a queen on a throne makes me feel safer, that's my business.

"Has it moved since yesterday?" I joke.

"Nope."

"Seems like an answer, Jess.  What do we have today?"

"Interns.  Lots of finalists for the C-Suite interning program.  Arias already claimed hers."

I snort.

"Were there cookies?"

"There was yelling and a point-by-point explanation about how _her_ son would have been taught to treat women," Jess replies.  "I wanted to send it to the National Organization of Women, just for its clarity even at extreme volume."

"Poor boy."

Jess' eyes narrow.

"He earned that lecture.  Fortunately, that leaves few applicants at this tier.  Unless you want the larval lawyer…"

"Jess!"

"Trust me, it's obvious when you meet Claire," she chortles.

"This is your gal."

She pushes a file across.  I know it's a student employee file because it's in a bright red folder with the subject's current age across the top.  Anyone managing employees has these in their desk, kept up to date by Jess and Lena's zealous, iron-fisted Human Resources and Internal Practices department. If someone claims during a follow up by HR fact-finders that they didn't know someone's age, I walk down there and I need only pull open a desk drawer to find for cause for termination.

"Let's see.  High school sophomore, Chicago.  Posh neighborhood yet attending public schools.  Various mentions in civic and charitable organizations.  Obvious interest in green businesses, reducing crime and police violence and economic justice.  Grades are…"

I flip through the summary.

"Frightening.  M-K?" I ask her.

"Initials.  That and no photos really helped, you were right.  I doubt Stockman in Practices would've taken on that kid from the Bronx except on paper.  Every time I see him, says he's glad he did."

"Stands for?"

"Open it."

I open the file, swallow hard and force my shaking hand flat on the desk.

"Why, Jess?"

"She really does want to work here, Lena.  She worships you.  I re-interviewed her twice. She knows your whole story this year...everything people put you through.  Can I send her in? Please?"

"Give me some time, then yes."

The door to my office swings open.  Jess didn't lock it behind her because no one has barged in on me so rudely and had access to the building an hour later.

"Lena, how nice to see you."

"Mother…"

\-----

"Are we really going to do this?" Lillian asks.

"Do what? Sit here in silence?"

I'm amazed she's gone this long.   I haven't written a good answer to a single email but I took great pleasure in trying to wait Lillian out.

"Pretend like this is what you want, Lena."

"Well, as I am running what remains of your husband's and son's company when I could have changed my name, fled the country, and founded a coffee shop in Oslo, or done a thousand other things all at far less of a toll on my sanity...yes, we should assume this is what I want."

Lillian sips her tea and smirks.

There's a knock on the inside of the door.  Jess demanded I leave it open.

"Yes?" I ask, looking up.

A lanky girl is in my office doorway, wearing a close approximation of my or Jess' clothing:  gray pantsuit, white blouse, short heels. Heavy-rimmed, stainless-steel glasses are perched on her nose.  Tied in a short ponytail are a small ocean of glossy black curls.

She's wearing a visitor badge.  I set the pencil down and smile at her.  The closest thing I have left to a smile, at least.  The one I use in hospitals and at children's charities.

"Hello, love.  Do you need something?"

"Er, yes.  I'm your ten-fifteen, Miss Lu-" she begins.  She swallows the rest of the word, shakes her head and tries again.  "Madam Chairwoman."

_Using the titles.  Buttering me up already, are we, young one?_

"Come in, please.  Have a seat."

"You can't be serious, Lena," Lillian snarls.

"She had an appointment," I reply, ducking my head back to the plans I was scribbling on.  "You did not, Lillian."

"I'm your mother, gi-"

"Are you?  You made every attempt to disabuse me of that notion when I was young, every attempt to reject me until just now.  Given that she's never denied being my mother, screamed at me, or called me "bastard" or "trash" or "whore" I think this young lady actually would have a more plausible claim."

The girl in the doorway raises her hand.

"Um, that's really nice but...I wouldn't know how.  I only had two dads.  Is that the sort of thing I could research?  I totally would!"

I chuckle.

_You know just how to work me, don't you, girl?_

Tossing the pencil down, I point at the chair right across from me.   Lillian starts toward it.

"Not you, obviously."

The intern goes to sit and Lillian tries to grab her by the arm.  The girl doesn't flinch or blink or move. She doesn't even slow down...but I heard.  In the still, quiet office, with my every nerve ending turned up loud by my fear, I heard.  I heard an old woman's fingerbones snapping when they struck something tougher than bedrock.

I make sure to burn Lillian's expression into my brain: the look of a withered, bitter creature which just tried and failed to stand in the way of the divine.  To Lillian's credit, the tears of pain are silent.  Jess makes a squeezing motion, one eyebrow lifted temptingly.  I shake my head.

"Now then, M-K...what are you here to do?"

"Learn from the best, ma'am."

"Oh?"

She nods eagerly.  The girl is everything I would have imagined from Clark Kent's daughter: a shy, timid exterior, as cosmopolitan as a white picket fence yet wholesome, virtuous and earnest as a small-town Fourth of July parade.  Wide-eyed, All-American innocence hiding both a keen mind and a force of nature.

"My fath…"  she smiles to herself.  "Clark said you don't learn from people who did well when they had it easy.  You learn from people who did well when it was hard.  No offense intended, but that's you, ma'am."  

I chuckle.

"I suppose it is.  So, I understand your name is Margaret.  Why do you go by Aggie?"

"My sister's name is Martha, ma'am.  So are both of my grandmother's. So many names starting with M have been confusing, otherwise."

"Lionel, Lillian, Lex, Lena..." I muse, ticking names off on my fingers.  "That's what we did wrong!"

Aggie Kent giggles and I've never been responsible for creating something so pure and unspoiled in my life.

"Bruce says that was one of the things that they used on each other a lot, my dads, in arguments and whatnot.  Grandmother and Ma--that's the Kents--always used it to shut my dads up when they were sick of it."

"Sounds like the most boring fight scene ever," I joke.

 

* * *

 

This next bit has some narrative pieces I feel like I should explain.

 

 **CHARACTER NOTE #1:**  

My version of Maggie Sawyer is the silk-bloused, platinum blonde English rose sort of character from "Batwoman" and "Bombshells" comics.  Not enough was done with Maggie Sawyer's Latina-ness in the show to make it worth digging too far. She was still thrown out of her house for gayness, but from a Welsh Catholic family, not a Mexican one.

**LEGAL NOTE #1:**

Don't Ask Don't Tell was in effect for less than two years in this universe.  The head of steam the religious right built up to pass it fizzled after a poignant public relations campaign anchored around "Kiss of Steel" which is an iconic photo of Diana and Minerva kissing in just-liberated Paris in 1944.  It holds a place in history similar to the photo of the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square.  A side effect of this was that Kate Kane was not discharged.  She completed her training at West Point, two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, serving a total of nine years and mustering out at the rank of Lieutenant Commander.

**LEGAL NOTE #2:**

Gay marriage was legalized in 2015 by the Oberfell v. Hodges case, as in our universe.  

**POLITICAL NOTE #1:**

Our darkest timeline political environment is canon:  Trump in the White House, Republican Senate, strongly Democratic congress (they won a few more seats) with a higher brown/female/LGBT contingent because if nothing else, seeing gay, swarthy women as heroes is something Wonder Woman gay-ve America and has become normal over the years since World War II.

What is different is that any neo-Nazi, anti-LGBTQ hate and other similar rally faces both human and Amazonian counterprotesters now.  A wall of silent and disdainful faces and powerful bodies, fully armored. Unarmed by present to protect the civilians. This has not stopped neo-Nazis of course, they're not that smart, but it has made their attempts to spark street violence...comically short lived.  Khaki shirt and weird-ass haircut with a baseball bat loses to the steel-wrapped left hook of a six-five, two-hundred pound Amazon with actual training.

 

**DC CANON VERSUS MY CANON:**

In my story here, basically, all of the DC Cinematic Universe is canon and has happened up to the movie Aquaman--haven't seen Shazam--with one notable exception.  Seeing as how they're adorable gay dads, Batman and Superman (Dark Angel and Apollo) did not nearly kill each other before teaming up. But the events in _Wonder Woman_ happened in 1917 and the attack on Midway City (Detroit for us) happened in 2016 as in the movie _Suicide Squad_.  

As in the movie, Enchantress did massive damage before she was killed--far as our science can tell--but Dr. Moone survived.  Joker broke Harley out but was subsequently killed by an all-Bats-on-deck counterstrike in Chicago led by Kate Kane, US Army veteran and the most experienced tactician of any of the vigilante, street-level heroes.  Well aware of her heroics, the Bats did not pursue Harley.

Here's where things take a hard left turn into gay land.  Following the Joker's death, Harley Quinn goes on a bender and at around sketchy strip club number eighteen that night, gets taken home by a woman in a green dress--it _looks_ like a green dress--who turns out to be very good with houseplants.

After detoxing which involved being naked, cuddled and held in place with mistletoe vines so she couldn't hurt herself, Harley finds herself in a very estrogen-rich, very gay household consisting of Catwoman, Poison Ivy, herself and Kate Kane (aka Batwoman) who joined the poly relationship after losing Maggie Sawyer.

Over the next six months (about five of which are therapy) Harley and June Moone, the former host of the Enchantress, gather their wits and prepare to testify to Congress.  Dr. June Moone and Dr. Harleen Quinnzell testified to Congress several months ago regarding the attack in Detroit, government corruption, dirty-dealing defense contractors hoping to capitalize on Enchantress and other things...things June saw and heard while hosting Enchantress, who can enter any room at will and who gravitates to dark energy.  Like, oh, I don't know, a room full of alt-right presidential advisers.

Utilizing her money and her do-not-fuck-with-me face, Kate Kane discovers who was hiding little Rachel Quinn--in the comic "Injustice", Harley has a daughter--and brings her home after winning full custody.  Rachel came home to her mom three weeks ago. 

Harley is so touched and excited that the street thugs in Chicago think "Redwing" (their name for the red-suited, red-winged armor of Batwoman) is actually dead when really she's trying to regain feeling in her extremities after thank-you sex.

* * *

 

##  **Amanda Waller**

(LAPD, Special Projects Division, Los Angeles -- Arrival + 10 years,  63 days until reunion)

 

Just outside the door, a diminutive white woman with honey blonde hair and a slight build is trying to keep a very curious little girl out of trouble in a room filled with police radios, already-logged-in computers, and SWAT gear. 

The detective assigned to grill me seems to be babysitting.  Good. Leverage. Make her slip up. Make her _afraid._ I've been here almost two days -- just under the 48-hour limit -- and heads will roll when I get back to DC and find out why I haven't been sprung.

The door swings open. 

I'll credit her this. Five-foot nothing and maybe a hundred pounds--utterly doomed--but the poor girl has swagger.

"Amanda Waller," she purrs.  "Mind if I call you Mandy? Or should I use one of these other names?  Let's see. Butcher of Barcelona? How about we start there?"

"Outside your jurisdiction, soccer mom."

"Soccer mom?" she laughs.  "Oh, you heartless bitch. Was that your plan?  Threaten my bouncing baby girl, throw me off my game, wait for your goons?"

She slurps her coffee.

"Nah.  Not mine.  Can't take credit for her," she sighs, glancing at the child who has somehow managed to start a lively, hand-waving discussion with a suited-up SWAT guy, a young beat cop and the janitor.

"Might've worked.  On a straight girl.  Thing is I'm not. Straight, that is.  I've been beaten up, thrown around, screamed at, you name it.  Thrown out by my dad when I was twelve years old. First roof I had over my head after that was when I joined the academy.  You're not half as scary as drunk guys in a sports bar chanting 'Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!' at me and my date."

She jerks her thumb over her shoulder at the bullpen.

"They're my family.  All of them. Any one of them would come in here and fuck you up good if you lay a finger on me."

She sighs, wiping whipped cream off her bubble-gum pink lip gloss.

"Unfortunately, you're right.  Barcelona isn't mine. You have a nationwide APB on you and Detroit _is_ in America."

"Detroit was a natural disaster.  Freak electrical storm."

"Hmm," she coos.  "Dr. Moone and Dr. Quinnzel claim otherwise, Amanda.  Colonel Flagg gave a _very_ detailed account of your actions to Congress just the other day."

She turns a tablet computer around to face me.  It's on C-SPAN and it's live. The chyron says 'Voting on overturning veto on SR 38'.  

_Shit._

I thought I had that in the bag.  President Trump was never a concern.  It was a massive anti-corruption, election security, pro-democracy measure.  So he vetoed it. The Republicans had learned the hard way not to leave the room after a junior senator leapt on the first chance in a week-long stalling tactic and moved it forward on unanimous consent. 

"Aye."  

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Nay."

The camera pans to a young female senator, a black woman in a red headscarf with blue and white trim.  The chyron labels her as Senator Laetitia Freeman, D-Michigan. This isn't the usual C-SPAN camera work.  Someone was told to come in and get a close up of her.

She wipes a tear away.

"Aye." 

She cradles her microphone tenderly, a smile at the edges of her mouth.

"The gentlewoman from Michigan yields."

Mitch McConnell stands at his podium, all of his half-chins trembling in fear and confusion.  He swallows and it's like watching a frog try to swallow a hippopotamus.

"Let the record show that the ayes have it.  Veto is overturned."

Applause erupts.  Someone whoops, leaping out of their seat and bonking the side of the camera. 

The detective sets the tablet face down.

"Sorry!" she teases.  "Were you counting on that _not_ happening _?_ Counting on someone to kill some senator's wife?  Counting on your defense contractor buddies to bribe the Senate Majority Leader?  Turns out that democracy is like a junker car: still works if you kick it hard enough.  You've been a very bad girl, Amanda. The things that happened in Detroit? That you _let happen..._ they really kicked the car."

"I would like to speak to my lawyer now," I mumble.

She chuckles.

"How many people have you shot in the head when they asked you that?  Just ballpark."

_This is a major city, that's not going to happen...too public._

Her phone twangs--a couple notes of electric guitar--and she pulls back her turtleneck's sleeve long enough to peek at an old fashioned wrist watch.

"Well, Mandy, it's been real.  Got a hot date. I'll go call the public defender on my way out.  Speaking of hot dates...your ride is here.  Courtesy of the United Nations."

She slaps her palms down hard on the table and before I can stop myself, I flinch and scoot my chair back.  She raps her knuckles on the inside of the door and someone opens it for her. That's when I see them: four women, tall as any pro basketball player, built like bricks and each wearing head-to-thigh plate armor and chainmail leggings.  Each has a large square shield strapped to her left arm and a sword hanging on her hip. The pair in back carry a massive, glowing chain across their shoulders. 

"Is that her?" one of them asks the detective.

"Mmm.  All yours.  On behalf of the United States of America, I would like to thank you for your assistance.  As a human being, I'd like to thank you for getting her out of my sight."

The Amazon removes her helmet, shaking sweat from her short black hair.

"Aphrodite's Peace, little one!" she exclaims, clapping the detective on the shoulder.

"To stand in the face of such evil is more than they should ask of you, even in Men's world.  But fear not. She belongs to the Iron Queen now."

"Little one?" the detective jokes.  "Oof."

They enter the room and with them in here, there's scarcely room to breathe.

"Amanda Waller, you are accused of the murder of sister Elena Hidalgo, an acolyte of Diana and citizen in absentia.  In the name of her holiness Diana, goddess of Olympus, patron of Themyscira, general of the legions and queen-at-war and in the name of Hippolyta, protector of the realm and queen-at-peace, you are hereby placed in the custody of the Republic of Themyscira.  You have been sentenced to drift upon the sea while you grow old, and to Tartarus thereafter.  Any final words?"

"I did what was necessary!"  I scream. "To protect my country!"

"You be sure to tell her holiness that when you die," the Amazon chuckles.  "Persephone loves dealing with the crazy ones."

"C'mon.  Got a barge and a can opener with your name on it. Free arctic gear and a lifetime supply of canned goods, too."

Nearly every cop is watching this, eyes-wide.  Two are filming it on their phones.  Meaning that this is legit.  It's not something they can get in trouble for.

_Surely...they can't...how did the Amazons get recognized as a nation?_

They slide my wrists into a single link on the chain and wrap my entire torso in it.  Walking with this on me is like pushing a car.

"You'll pay for this, detective!  I'll have that little girl killed!  I'll have her mother killed!  I'll have everyone you ever loved killed!"

_Why did I just...fuck.  This chain is like the lasso, isn't it?_

"She talks a lot," the little girl complains.  "And she's a sore loser. I think she needed a better mommy," she whispers.  One of the SWAT guys breaks into a fit of laughter.  

Before I'm hauled into the cargo elevator--no doubt the only place my escort would fit--I get another look at the detective.  Her motorcycle club's jacket is over the back of her chair.

Sawyer.  

Now I have a name, that woman will suffer.

 

* * *

 

##  **Rachel Gertrude Quinn a.k.a " Monster", "Sprout", "Feather" and "Kitten"**

 

I'm hungry.  Miss Smythe says that we've already had our snacks.  Hunter was nice. He gave me his snack but he pulled my hair right after.  I did like mommy said and the vice principal lady was mad at me.  

She said things like....

_"Where did you even get this?"_

_"Jesus, this is a carpenter's mallet!"_

_"Nice little girls don't hit boys with big hammers."_

The lady who talks about feelings a lot--she's like mom--asked about my feelings said I could go back to Miss Smythe's room.

"Everybody get in a circle!" Miss Smythe calls.  "Scoot! Scoot! Scoot!"

She makes us sit on our bottoms and scoot to the middle of the room.  It's so much fun!

"Today, we're going to read a story called _And Tango Makes Three…_ "

\----- 

We all clap.  Miss Smythe loves doing the voices and she's really good.  I hope she teaches me for a bajillion years.  

"Now kids, what was the moral of that story?"

Jenna raises her hand.

"Penguins are pretty."

"That's true," Miss Smythe laughs.  "But that's not a _moral._ It's an _observation_."

Mason raises his hand.

"That...sometimes a family isn't the same?"

"Very good, Mason.  Not everybody's family has to be the same.  All sorts of families happen and they all love their children.  Can you give me some examples of loving families?" she asks.

"My mom and my dad."

"My dad."

"My mom."

"My moms."

I raise my hand.

"Yes, Rachel?"

"Can someone have more than two moms?" I ask.

Something happens to Miss Smythe's face.  Her eyebrow wiggles. Mom says that's called a 'tic' and that it's how you know when to smack them.

"Maybe, yes.  Why do you ask, sweetie?"

"'Cause I have four mommies.  There's mom, she's like me, 'cept her pigtails are red and blue.  There's her girlfriend Kitty, she rides a motorcycle and tickles me a lot and she purrs when she sleeps. And mom's wife is Pam and she _really_ likes plants and Kitty's girlfriend has red hair an-"

The bell rings so loud no one can hear me.

"Not fair!"

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:**  
Rachel Gertrude Quinn is named after Harley's maternal (Jewish side) and Paternal (Irish catholic side) grandmothers.  She is NOT the Joker's child.  She is the result of a late-night visit to North Shore Fertility clinic by a slinky cat burglar.  The only vials reported missing were ones labeled "Wayne, Bruce".  As opposed to the biblical account of Lilith and Sam'ael's relationship, this occurred as part of Bruce Wayne (Sam'ael) and Kate Kane (Azrael) prank war which they've kept up for 6,431 years since leaving Haven.  This one was a bit intense, they agreed, so they're taking a break from the pranks.  From a guy-on-a-streetcorner, the world-is-ending point of view, Rachel is the devil's daughter.  
  
**AUTHOR'S NOTE #2** :  
If your mom is Harley Quinn, you learn about consent and boundaries  _early_ and she sends you to school with a cute little version of her favorite hammer...  
  
**AUTHOR'S NOTE #3:**  
This poor elementary school really has no idea what they're in for.  Martha and Aggie Kent never caused any trouble so no one noticed they were supernatural.  
  
**AUTHOR'S NOTE #4:**  
The nicknames for Rachel are as follows:  
  
Monster -> mommy Harley   
Sprout -> mommy Pamela  
Feather -> mommy Kate  
Kitten -> mommy Selina

* * *

 

##  **Selina Kyle a.k.a "Catwoman" / Sekhmet**

Side Splitters Comedy Club and BBQ Buffet

Chicago, Illinois

My phone makes a noise like a squeaking, new-born kitten.  Turning it face up long enough to read it, I smile. Got some time still.  Harley's eyes connect with mine, just for an instant, as if to wonder if there's anything to worry about.  I sip my latte and shake my head.

"So…" she squeaks, full to the brim with feigned shyness.

"Uh…" 

She lowers the microphone, making it screech.

"So I go to my psychologist the other day," Harley begins.  "She asks me about my week. I tell her well, I robbed three banks, got into a high-speed go-kart chase with my ex's henchmen and stuffed a lawn flamingo full of plastic explosives…"

If nothing else, she has their complete attention now.

"None of the TV ads talk about exploding flamingo syndrome," she mutters.

A few titters of laughter.  Moments. A spark.

"Look, I get where she's coming from," she jokes.  "I'm a doctor too. I mean, I went to school and shit.  You all owe me 15,000 for this set. This may be chilly.  Bend over..."

The spark continues.

"Now," Harley sighs, plunking her right leg up on the stool.

_Crazy bitch did it._

Her ankle monitor is painted with a giant smiley face, one half normal and one half a mouthful of fangs.  Daffodils and AK-47s and bullets and peace symbols are scattered around it.

"So they told me I couldn't take if off.  Didn't say I couldn't paint it."

One man laughs--fully laughs--and I grin.  Dry leaves have caught the spark.

"The SWAT team was there like that," she jokes, snapping her fingers.  "Faster than Dominos. They helped me with the clearcoat."

Someone lobs a tomato from the front row.  Harley snatches her mallet, swats it back and leaves the heckler sputtering and dazed from a hundred-mile-an-hour collision with fruit.  She twirls the mallet and taps it against the stage.

"I got gay married the other day."

"How gay was it?" shouts some drunk asshole.

"Gay.  Like you know a pride parade?  Gayer. This was more like a Senator in an airport bathroom.  Let me tell you, nothing weirder for a shrink than getting gay married.  I mean, Frued said that anything longer than it was wide symbolized a dick.  First off...low bar, right ladies?"

"Preach!" someone shouts.

"So in the middle of the ceremony, my brain is stuck on the fact that the first dick-shaped thing I've seen in weeks is the rose my girl's holding.  I mean...it's one thing when it's strapped on bu-"

Someone spit-takes her beer.

"You got this, babe," I murmur, pushing my chair in and grabbing my helmet.

Moments after the rear exit clicks shut, I hear a full-on guffaw.

\- - - - -

I drop the kickstand and turn the key.

Children are running circles in the grass while a silver-haired teacher with a clipboard counts heads, bobbing her pencil as she points it at each little one.  I snag the bag with my whip and claws in it. I'm not expecting trouble but I'll be damned if I'm not going to be ready for it. The pouch squeaks.

"Pull my finger!" shouts a mechanized voice.

I peek inside.  A talking Drunko the clown doll is nestled amongst daggers, vials of poison and a cast iron chain, each link molded from the spine bones of a king cobra.

_That explains how the security guard heard me last night._

The doll is covered in lipstick.  Written in magic marker on the doll's butt is a short message in a kindergartener's shaky script.

**Kitten loves Mommy!**

Wiping a tear off my cheek, I pull the whip out of the bag and tuck the coil in my belt.  

I wave at the teacher taking a headcount.

"Rachel Quinn?" I ask.

"You are?"

"Selina Kyle.  I'm on the paperwork."

"Kyle?"

"Yes?"

"Not Quinn?"

"Didn't take her mother's name, so no…  Check the paperwork."

"Hmph.  We'll see about that."

_Moldy-cunted bitch.  She was the one who processed it.  Yesterday._

She grabs a radio off her belt.

"Principal Detlefsen, please come to the west side."

The principal is a round, red-cheeked man who is a few gray hairs from full-on Santa Claus status.

"Ms. Kyle, hello."

"Hi.  Just trying to pick up the little spider monkey over there."

I wave at Rachel.  She drops from the tree branch she was on, making the nearest staff member screech in terror.  Catching another branch fifteen feet down, she builds horizontal momentum and then lets go. She tucks into the roll and comes up with her palms upraised, thirty feet from the base of the tree and having turned a twenty-foot drop into a circus routine.

Two of her classmates clap.

"That one," I joke.  "The one with her mother's penchant for gymnastics."

The teacher shakes her head.

"We've talked about this," Detlefsen whispers to the teacher.

"I've taught here forty-one years," she snarls.  "Back when this was a nice neighborhood…"

"Before there were coffee shops and queers?" I offer.

Her face goes red.

"And this is the job now, Sharon," he reminds her.  "This woman is listed as a co-guardian. She can take Rachel home."

"It's not right," Sharon whimpers.  "That's..." she sniffs.  "That's not a family."

"Anytime you want to talk about transition or pensions, I'm here."

 _Smooth motherfucker,_ I think.  _He can't fire her but he can shut her out and remind her it's time to retire._

I scuff my boots on the curb.  "Hear those teaching pensions are decent."

"Not another word, sodomite."

"Hang on!" I mutter.

I pull out the card from my back pocket.  Kate's idea after a restaurant kicked us out.  Religious Asshole Insult Bingo.

"Sodomite.  Whore. Dyke.  Faggot...and the wild card square," I mutter, circling each one.

"Bingo!  I win."

She just blinks at me.

Rachel makes her way out of the line of students exiting the playground and beelines for my legs.  She hugs me tight.

"Hi mommy."

"Hi, kitten.  Did you have a good day?"

She nods.

"I got to use Mr. Smacky."

"Oh?"

I grab her and lift her onto my hip.

"Yeah.  A boy pulled my hair."

"Ah.  You know it's not OK to hit people for no reason, right?"

"Right."

I kiss her cheek.

"Just checking."

As we walk back towards my bike, she whispers in my ear.

"But that's a good reason, right?"

"Yeah," I chuckle.  "It'll do.  C'mon.  Let's go shoplift some snacks."

"I want a Snickers!" 

"No.  Fruit.  Your mom will be mad and mommy Kate will make me do fifty push-ups if I get you any more candy"

Rachel blows a raspberry.

"Can't steal fruit, mommy."

"Watch me."

 

* * *

 

## Alex Danvers

(LAPD, Special Projects Division, Los Angeles -- Arrival + 10 years,  63 days until reunion)

 

Maggie eyes me like a lion eyes a wounded antelope.  Her svelte frame is slouched so far forward that her calf brushes mine under the table. Every now and then, she flexes so that I am reminded of that distracting fact.  The crimson lipstick she wears is staining her coffee cup and left just a ghost of red on the pita bread she's nibbling. It's beeswax, she told me last night, organic...or rather, she purred that bit of trivia in my ear while nibbling on my neck.

Everything I learned flirting and loving and living with Vickie feels so small faced with Maggie.  With this woman who can make a shiver run down my back with a twitch of her lip.

_I swear I've done this gay thing before…_

"Amanda Waller, huh?" I ask.

Maggie nods.

"And she threatened Skylar?"

Maggie sighs.

"And you, and me, and puppies and baseball and apple pie, Alex."

I hum.

"Is there any part of her file you can give me?  Anything?"

She sighs.

"Maybe.  What are you going to do with it in _venture capital?_ " she teases.

If the CIA ever has a reason to question my loyalty, I humbly refer them to the fact that Maggie wasn't able to get my affiliation out of me even when asking with her finger doing some sort of black magic on my clit.

"Maybe I'll see if she has any intellectual property I can steal," I joke.

Maggie knows that's not my real job.  I know she knows. She respects that I can't tell her--not wouldn't but can't--and so we have this silly little dance.

"Alex?"

I exhale a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.

"Sorry, Mags."

"Cuts deep, doesn't it, when it's about Skylar?"

I nod.

"What's the story there?" she asks.

"Oh, the usual.  I was a gold star lesbian who actually fainted during the male puberty part of health class and got knocked up in high school."

Maggie's gray eyes narrow.

"Back...the...fuck...up," she growls.  

_Yes ma'am, right away, ma'am…_

I want to hear that tone in her voice.  Again. Tonight. After Skylar's put to bed.

"This story I near to hear."

I chuckle.

"So, my first girlfriend was bi.  Dumped her boyfriend when we started dating."

Maggie raises her coffee cup.

"Good on you for bringing her back to the path of righteousness," she teases.  

"Vickie Donahue.  Had a crush on her since I was…"

I turn my eyes towards the ceiling, trying to do the math.

"Since before I had a clue what a crush was.  I was full on, ten-of-ten crushing, Mags. The whole time we were best friends, so we'd be camping or hanging out or whatever.  I'd orgasm in the middle of a dream because her hand touched my back during a sleepover and...I never acted on it. Completely stuck."

"I've had it bad, too.  What happened?"

"Kara," I chuckle.  "About two weeks after came to live with us, she sort of…"

Kara has given me _carte blanche_ to tell this story.  Doesn't make it easy. This story tends to make people think badly of Kara.  People hating on my sister is something that I deal with...rather poorly. Violence has ensued.

"Well, one day I guess Kara was bored because fucked her way through the drama club, one linebacker and three girls from marching band."

Maggie coughs, thumping her chest.  For safety's sake, she puts her coffee down.

"Ohhhkay."

"Anyhow.  I am looking for my kid sister because it's time to drive her home and I walk in and I hear some girl moaning.  Soon as I realize what's up, I try and get away and I turn around and pow!"

I smack a fist into my open palm.

"Vickie Donahue, buck naked, grabbing my hand and confessing that she felt the same way about me.  I guess Kara told her to tell me how she felt."

Maggie grins.

"So what you're saying is that _both_ Danvers sisters taste the rainbow?"

"Ugh," I groan.  "That's my _kid sister_ , Mags."

She waves away my complaint.

"Do continue," she purrs.

"Well, we went on a camping trip about a month later.  Plan was to lose my virginity in the woods, so far out there no one would ever find it…"

I sigh.

"I made a stupid comment, she got mad, I talked her down, we both went to Planned Parenthood to get tested so that she wouldn't feel put on."

"Oh," Maggie mumbles.

"Yeah.  Oh. Turns out she was pregnant.  Only a couple weeks. Now, her family is a god-awful mess.  Vickie's dad is a drunk, mom is a compulsive gambler and abusive.  Fortunately, by the time she delivered, Vickie was eighteen. So my mom had a lawyer draw up papers that gave me an angle for custody if we ever needed it."

"So there I am, first day of Brwn Mar, three thousand miles from home, surrounded by women who were _born_ wearing thousand dollar blouses and at the end of the days classes, I head home and help Vickie put Skylar to bed."

Maggie smiles.

"That's…" she begins.

"Impressive.  Some people would've gone for adoption."

"Couldn't," Alex sighs.  

"It was part Vickie, that baby.  As college wore on, it became clear that we were better as moms than we were as a couple.  Go back to being friends. By grad school, Vickie realized that I was the one who was best for Skylar...so a couple months ago she signed the custody papers.  So now it's just me."

"Painless, right?"

I sniff.  Then I feel it at the back of my throat, rising upward.

"God, I'm such a mess," I sob.

Maggie reaches for my hand.

"Alex?  That story you just told?  That's badass, okay? You decided to raise a child at seventeen and a fucking half, stuck with school, stuck with your girlfriend, got a degree, go to med school, top of your class and raised a good girl...I would know.  I can smell a juvenile delinquent. So you need to own that shit."

"Thanks, Mags."

She rubs her thumb in my palm.

"Plus, this means if we ever have kids, it's _totally your turn_ to be pregnant.  Vickie covered for mine."

"Maggie!"

* * *

 

##  **Ruby Arias /  Discord or Eris**

(CBS Studios, Los Angeles, California,  -- Arrival + 10 years,  63 days until reunion)

 

"Girl!" one of the gaffers barks.  "Come here."

I hurry over, anger rising in me like acid.

_I am destruction's daughter, man-child.  Speak to me again that way and I will write the next great tragedy in your blood._

The gaffer is a wiry, ginger-haired man.  All of his hair is ginger. The fuzz on his cheeks, the mop of curls on top of his head, the hair on his arms.

"Sorry," he huffs.  "What's your name? I never got it and I'd rather use it…"

"Ruby."

"Hi, Ruby.  Jack Margot.  Give me a hand with this?" he asks.

I glance at the scaffolding he's trying to get upright.  Probably weighs half a ton.

"This is a job for a moving crew.  Like, twenty guys."

"Yeah," Jack laughs.  "Or it's an opening with a smoking-hot brunette who wouldn't give me the time of day unless I let her show off."

"You do realize I'm no-"

Jack pulls his wallet out of his pocket partway, showing off his driver's license.  Vertical printing, big red stripe. Flashing warning signs about selling to minors for a 7-11 clerk or, in this case, a cardinal flashing his red feathers to a skeptical female.

The boys at school are all _terrified_ of me.  They have been ever since the track meet when I tripped -- goddess of disasters and chaos, right? -- and broke the foundation of a concrete bleacher with my face.  Minerva hushed it up but the rumor mill of high school proved stronger than memory-wiping magic.

"About my age?" he laughs.  "Yeah."

"What makes you even think I can lift it?" Ruby asks.

"End of a shift, I'm usually putting away props.  Lately, there's scuttlebutt about an intern helping the fight coordinator.  So imagine my surprise when I go to put away one of the batons and I find this..."

Jack goes into his workbelt and pulls out a short length of steel pipe with five crystal-clear dents in it.

"Milady?" Jack asks.  "May I have your hand?"

"Jerk."

I slide my fingers back into the dents.  Jack strokes the back of my hand idly, like he maybe doesn't even realize he's doing it.  My insides lift up and a flutter starts low in my stomach. Like a butterfly made of fire.  

"Fucking amazing," Jack breathes.  "So, are you a space alien?"

"No.  I'll tell you but you can't tell anyone."

"I won't.  I mean, I had to sabotage four moving carts to get this thing stuck.  Not blowing my chance with you."

"Four?"

"I needed it stuck!" he complains.  "I needed the guys to have to go find carts so we'd be alone."

"You know Apollo?" I ask.

"Yay tall, hair like Fabio, flies around beating up criminals and tipping mountains back up when they fall over?  Claims he's not a god but his perpetual good hair day says otherwise?"

"Yeah.  He's...family.  Extended family, I guess."

"So, you're like, an actual Greek goddess then?"

This is the part where he'll run screaming.

"Apollo is the twin brother of one of my mom's lovers.  Yes, lovers. Plural. Goddesses be like that."

"No judgement," Jack chortles.

Jacks eyes go wide.  Like two lime-green dinner plates.

"Damn.  If he's...then...twin sister...Diana...is that who Wonder Woman is?"

"Whoa," Jack murmurs.

I sniffle.

"I shouldn't have told you that."

"Hey, hey, hey…" Jack coos, wiping my cheeks with a lens cloth.

"I think it's pretty cool that you're down here with us meatsacks, making minimum wage carrying around the big-shots egos."

I laugh through the tears and the snot.  Someone is approaching. Someone in high heels who struts in them with a gait even as a metronome.

Click.

Click.

Click.

The clicking stops.

"What are you doing with my goddaughter, young man?"

"Ms. Danvers?  Uh, hi. Wait. Are you..."

"You're V-v-v…" Jack stammers.

It's the opposite of the usual male reaction to Venus' appearance, to the removal of the thin cloak of imperfection that lets Kara walk around and go about her day as merely a stunning woman rather than as the focal point of a cult, gathering worshipers wherever she walks.  Jack is petrified _._ The expression on his face is the same one Helen of Troy must have worn when she spurned her patroness and was nearly slain on the spot.  

I throw myself into my mother's lover's arms.  Thoughts bounce in my head like pinballs.

_Mother's lover?  Need a shorter word for that whole situation..._

_She smells amazing..._

_Mom is going to be so mad that I got to hug her..._

_She's strong…_

_Guess I'm straight..._

"Hi, Kara."

"Hi there, you little monster.  Say hi to your mom, kay? I really want to see her."

"How are you so much taller than me?" I grumble.  "You're taller than mom."

"The universe is a domain larger than war," Kara whispers. 

"Still not fair," I grumble.

"Jack?" 

"Mmmph."

"Jack!" Kara shouts.

"Ruby's a big girl.  Or she's a big girl to the extent you're a big boy, at least.  I trust her. Nothing stupid, no drugs, and I want to see her in one piece.  Breakfast. Tomorrow morning. My trailer. Got it?"

"Yeah," Jack manages.  "I got it."

"Great.  Uh, Rubes?"

Kara jerks her thumb back at the stage area.

"Got to go do a take."

"No," I pout.  "More hugs."

"Danvers!" the producer barks.  "Get your ass over here!"

Kara rolls her eyes.

"Is he?" I whisper.  "...nice?"

One of the old white guys who kept pawing Kara turned out to be a great guy who really didn't know any better until she taught him.  That's why I check now. My instincts are darker than hers. She can still see good in bad people.

Kara shakes her head.

"He's a pain in the ass, kid."

"Thanks."

As she saunters back over to him, he puts an arm around Kara.  Next to him, she looks like a giant and he's not making any effort to lift his arm so that it's not just around her ass.  I noticed Harvey fondling the key fob for a BMW. There's only one beemer in the lot that's flashy enough for that asshole.  Red convertible with the custom license plate of "TITAN".

"Jack?" I ask.  "Can you get someone to get this thing ratcheted down?"

I nod at the scaffolding which is propped up by my fingertip.  He must not have seen me lift it. 

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Jack exclaims.  "Help!"

He scampers off.

_Smart man.  Safety will get this thing tied down quicker than Sets and if it's a freak accident with no one hurt, no follow up._

While I wait, I pull out my phone and scroll through the executive's list on the webpage just to make sure no one even worse is next in line.  A whisper into that pervert's gas tank and a moment's meditation.  Entropy and decay shot through the machinery and the full attention of the Fates. 

So many ways something can go wrong on a drive home…but the show will go on.

 

* * *

 

##  **Lena Luthor**

(L-Tech Campus, Los Angeles -- Arrival + 10 years,  61 days until reunion)

 

I glance up at the television, if only because it is showing rescue vehicles and emergency workers.  If someone's hurt, I need to know. Lex? Lillian? Some mad plan of mine that I forgot making or executing?

"Following an intense, two-day search, the Sheriff's Department has called off the search for long-time Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who eyewitnesses said disappeared over the railing on this stretch of road after apparent brake and steering failure.  Allegations had been rising against Weinstein of sexual impropriety, entangling him in accusations of rape coming from many of the worlds most recognizable actresses."

Aggie Kent walks into the room and sets my coffee down before sipping hers.

"It says _Morrigan_ on this," I complain, tapping the cup with my pencil.

"Does it?" Aggie asks, lost in thought as she stares at the television.

"Care to explain why?"

She breaks the hold of the news.

"May I sit, ma'am?"

I gesture to the chair.

"As you know my father is Clark Kent, who has an…"

Aggie stalls.

"Alter ego?" I offer.

She nods.

"I'm not sure if you're aware of this but my family...my extended family, is well-connected.   He's close to Kara Danvers.  She also ha-"

The world swirls around me, black as the pit.

  


I crack my eyes open to see a trembling, teary-eyed Aggie Kent and a frantic looking Jess perched on the other side of my desk, staring at me.

"Don't _do that,_ boss!" Aggie hisses.

Jess nods.

"What she said.  Fine on a liquid diet my ass...you didn't just faint.  You nearly died, Lena.  I had to have Mercy Graves threaten the paramedics to get them to leave you here.  Dangerously low on potassium, calcium, Vitamin C, sodium. Should I go on?"

I shake my head.

"I can't keep solid food down, remember?  It's fine.  Don't worry about me."

"Fuck that shit," Aggie Kent grumbles.

Both Jess and I jump.

"Did Clark Kent's daughter just _swear?"_ Jess marvels aloud.

"Strange times," Aggie mutters, digging out her cell phone.

"Hi.  It's Aggie.  I need you to take someone to lunch.  Someone who doesn't think she's worthy of solid food, let alone love."

Jess just shrugs.

_Who could that be?_

"Thanks, aunty Di."

Aggie hangs up her phone.

"Figure out something you think your stomach can handle, Lena.  Wonder Woman will take you to lunch in forty minutes."

Jess whistles.

"Aunty Di?" she teases, nudging Aggie.

"She's family.  There's a whole story," Aggie admits.  "Star crossed lovers, one for the ages, without such a love in the world the sun shall never again shine...  That sort of thing."

She puts her palms flat on my desk and gently flicks my nose.

"One which you are a part of, woman.  So no dying!"

"Ow," I mutter.

_This is what I get for taking on a brilliant young woman with a heart of gold as my protege._

* * *

 

 


	10. Cupid and Icarus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS EXCITING EPISODE:  
> The one where Kara gets Alex drunk, Hollywood memorials are self-indulgent drivel, Lena has an appointment, where machines fall and a goddess rises.
> 
> NEXT TIME ON "THE EX-WIVES":  
> Los Angeles comes to grips with their new patron, the wrong sort take notice, and an orgy is desperately in need of spice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE #1:**  
>  _Hetaira_ were a type of prostitute in ancient Greece, typically better educated and serving a higher class, or serving one client long term (as here). Though their presence is debated and was likely overestimated and overdramatized by medieval Christian scholars, the mentions of temple prostitutes or sacred prostitutes in Near Eastern and Greek records would represent a similarly "exalted" form of sex work. Venus has not rebuilt her temples or her cult but she has recruited -- accidentally -- a few such individuals as particularly memorable or insistent one night stands tracked her down to offer themselves. 
> 
> **AUTHOR'S NOTE #2:**  
>  Kara is Venus and contains her memories, so in addition to being Alex's sister and Eliza's daughter and proud of those, she sees herself as the rightful head of the Cult of Venus and plans on reconstituting it at small scale at least. Assume that conservative American Christians will be unhappy about this. Assume that some pastor's daughter will get gay panic something fierce when she walks past Kara after failing to pray away the gay. 
> 
> **AUTHOR'S NOTE #3:**  
>  This version of superpowers (divine magic) is simpler than the sci-fi version but also more contextual. Through her father, Uranus, primordial sky god, Venus is empowered not only by love but also by the workings the heavens, giving her the power of large-scale creation and manipulation of the cosmos. Mucking with gravity so she can fly is neat and it's cool to be able to use a star's fusion to burn things...but the ability to create a pulsar with the snap of the fingers isn't super useful (pun intended) stopping a mugger, since the radiation would incinerate the mugger and moments thereafter, the Earth. It also would not make her any better at weaving or metalworking, since those are not her domains.

##  **Kara / Venus or Aphrodite**

(Los Angeles, California – Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

 

 

My phone is trying to drill a hole in the bedside table.  In the dark, I can only see it when it lights up. There is a dip in the bed next to me, still warm.  The sheets smell like musk and raspberry.

_Damn.  Some host I am._

I at least could have walked him — no, her — out.  The scruffy ginger with the peach-fuzz soft hair on his chest and the button nose and the rough hands left before I drifted off.  So the warmth must have been the girl I met. I didn’t get her name because those were the rules. She didn’t want me to have it. I remember dark-skinned curves.  Hips wide and strong, the sort that have always carried the human race. Flashing smile with spotlight bright teeth, tulip pink lips. Springy hair on her head and a wisp of it on her mound.  A slit so tender and so pink that it practically glowed against her skin.

The damned phone won't shut up.  

It answers itself by remote control before I can grab it.

"Hello, Kara."

"Alex, why do you do this?" I groan.

She whistles.  In my mind's eye I see her rocking on her feet, eyes up towards the ceiling.  Like she always used to do when lying to our teachers.

"Who me?"

"Yes, you.  Quit using your evil CIA powers to turn on my cell phone."

She swears that it’s because she bought me the phone but I’m not sure.  She is way too into kickboxing for someone who works a stockbroker. This year she asked for hunting knives for Christmas.  Not sure what a vegan plans to do with them but she probably didn’t trust mom to keep quiet about it.

"Let me in the apartment, then."

Shit.  I scramble out of bed and into some jeans — which I now realize are not mine — and hang a jacket on my shoulders.  Good enough to open the door, at least.

I get an armful of big sister the instant I do.  Something that smells cinnamon-y passes by my head. 

_I think I saw the IHOP logo!_

"Good to see you, squirt," I tease.

"Jumbo."

"Ice queen."

"Party girl."

We both start laughing.

"Hey, sis!"

"You okay?" She asks.

"One hundred percent!  Totally! Awesome!" I assure her.  "Why? Is it something I’m doing? It’s the socks, right?  Humans put socks on when they get out of bed. Shit!"

Alex rolls her eyes and picks up a nearby cup of coffee.

"Guessing I can take this?"

Whoever made it didn’t take more than a sip.  There’s a ring of glittery silver lipstick on the inside of the rim.   Alex must have really needed the coffee because she didn’t check.

"Still warm.  Thanks, sis."

"It’s not mine.  But that _is_ a cute shade on you."

She wipes her mouth, looks at her hand and mouths ‘asshole’ at me.

I smash a mini cinnamon roll into my mouth and chew.  The noises that escape my throat bear more than a passing resemblance to other moans brought on by other pleasures.  Once I've sucked my fingers clean, I pour myself a coffee.

"What can I do for you, sister mine?"

Alex is white as a sheet and her hand is shaking and with it, the coffee cup.

"Okay, honey," I coo.  "Let's give that to me.  Sit down.  Let's talk."

A hand on the shoulder suffices to guide her and one-finger tap flops her into my favorite recliner where she lands in a tangle of denim, cotton and raw, uncut slouch.

_Alex can't even sit straight.  How appropriate._

"Tell me, Alex."

She swallows a lump and doesn't respond.

I walk over to the fridge and check my calendar.  I cross off two more boxes on the notecard below. I have one Best Actress and one Best Actor left, then I will have bedded every 2018 nominee save that dashing Jack...and he was more than happy to spend a week in Milan in an unknown artist's apartment fucking my _hetairai_ , especially Will.  The best I have, with those baby blues and biceps like steel cable and thighs like tree trunks and that steely prick between his legs.  Eager to use it on whoever will have him, male or female or betwixt and between.

Jack is closeted.  He cried happy tears on his thank-you note.  I could smell it in the salt. Joy blesses the tears, pain taints them.

The new movie is coming out.  The premiere is tonight.  Scuttlebutt is that Weinstein Productions was bought out, wholesale, by some shadowy investor.  Some long-retired legend of Tinseltown.

There will be memorials to Harvey everywhere -- though sadly, no hogs at a trough -- and Diana has furnished me the tools of my revenge.  She may attend, she teased, just in case justice must be rendered on the spot. Justice as it was done in Rome and Greece. I pray she's wrong.  The Justice League could get her out of the country without handcuffs but I doubt she'd be welcome again if she put some rapist mogul to the blade in a public place.

"Is that papyrus?" Alex exclaims.  "Where the blazes did you order it? And don't you have a literally _bejeweled_ cell phone?"

My cheeks pink.

"She _truly enjoyed_ my little demonstration at the expo.  How was I to know she was Steve Job's daughter?"

Alex rolls her eyes.

"Lisa was four years ago.  Four free upgrades of the solid gold, stupid expensive iPhone.  How in th-" Alex sputters.  "Do you realize ho-" she adds.  "You're going to give gays a bad name, Kara.  I swear, thirsty people giving you gifts saves you like 30% on your monthly expenses..."

I tap the calendar.

"This is an ancient business.  Best handled with ancient tools.  Temples should be made of stone, laid by hand.  It is an act of prayer to build one. A sculpture?  Hand-carved. A devotee? Blessed by my hand, not by email."

"Pretty sure that only happens in those joke internet ministries," Alex replies.  "You're serious about this, aren't you, Kara? Starting a religion?"

"Mmm-hmm.  Diana and Minerva have already begun to rebuild their cults.  High time I do the same. I am love's _advocate_ , Alex.  It's _defender_.  The shield and spear that stands between passion and lust and the flutters of a first kiss and endless apathy that hollows the soul.  The voice in the mind that whispers 'no' when someone thinks themselves too pathetic for love."

"The world needs more love," Alex agrees.  "You are such a drama queen."

I kiss my thumb and place it to tomorrow's date, where I drew four sigils.  A crescent moon on an indigo background. An owl with a spear in talon on a rippling bolt of crimson cloth.  A rose and a goblet laid over rolling hill and a sunburst at dawn. A soldier's helmet adorned not with horsehair but with a brush of roaring flame.

I had drawn a raven with eyes of emerald flame in pencil but I later erased it.

Tonight is my last hurrah for tomorrow at dawn, Kara Danvers becomes a mask, a happy memory when I throw myself into the arms of Diana, Minerva, Bellona and the comforts of divinity.  At midnight, I swear new oaths of fidelity and love to replace that death took from us twenty centuries ago.  At the last light of solstice a few weeks from now I will light a new flame above my throne and dedicate a temple to myself Kythia.  With that, Olympus Feminus will be born.  The world will relearn what it was like when gods walked among them, playing tricks and teaching lessons and meting out justice.  Fates give us wisdom that perhaps we can be better than we were when Zeus ruled. Less cruel. More kind. Less disdainful. More fair .

_And today is my last chance with Lena._

Alex gets up from her chair, comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder.

"Tomorrow, huh?"

"Yes."

"Sounds complicated," she sighs, squeezing my shoulder.  "Three girlfriends?  I can scarcely handle Maggie."

_Four, if I'm lucky.  If I  can remember how miracles work.  If I can get Lena to stop screening my calls..._

"It's funny, Alex.  In so many ways, it's a family, not a lover's bond.  But in so many others, it burns bright and hot as lust itself.  If I am exhausted from shooting, Diana will take my correspondence.  If I am jealous of her and Minerva, I've no doubt Bellona will step in.  Distract me with some mischief. Talking. So much talking. We must agree on rules and pick our days where we get to be selfish, have someone to ourselves.  We have to honor each other's insecurities."

"Somehow sounds more like managing a team at a marketing company than a relationship," Alex replies.

"All relationships are work, Alex.  Work and communication. In a poly relationship, it's more obvious and you have to do it mindfully.  That's all. We're busy. Simply piling into bed each night will be more love and more touch than some poor souls get in an entire marriage."

She nods and sips her coffee.

"What's bothering you, Alex?"

"Will I ever see you again?" she croaks.  "Why would I, I suppose. You'll be off playing god, with some..."

A smile crosses her lips, then flees.  Like some black thoughts in her head had snarled and chased it off.  

"Some real lookers," Alex jokes.

I flop down on the couch, belly down, and put my chin on the armrest.

"Sisters, Alex.  _Storge_ ," I remind her, stroking her tear-stained cheek.  " _Pragma_.  Those are forever.  That's why family can drive you nuts, because it's forever."  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **< "Storge" = "familiar love", description for love of family.  Greeks saw it as springing from memory.>  **
> 
> **< "Pragma" = "enduring love", the matured, harmonious relationship between two people (e.g. longtime spouses, lifelong friends) who have put in the effort and made each other part of their lives.  Greeks saw this as being unconscious like a habit.>**

"All right," I laugh.  "What's really bothering you, weirdo?  I know that you know me better than to think I would ghost you."

"The cult," Alex replies.  "You can't do it. There are people...people who will kill for their religion and with what Min and Di did, they're just itching for an excuse.  They'll kill you."

"Stockbrokers do a lot of counter-terrorism?" I ask.

The blood leaves Alex's face.

"Still don't believe me," I sigh.  "Want the ten-second version of proof?"

"Go to the fridge.  A false panel in the freezer.  Two bottles that look like old-fashioned milk containers.  That and the paper bag."

Alex gives me a look but she cooperates, bringing back two ice-crusted, thick-necked glass bottles and a squat, crumpled brown paper bag.

"What's this?"

I rip the bag open.

"What's with that apple?"

"It's solid gold, obviously.  Fresh from the Hesperides. Here..."

I puff on the apple and rub it on my shirtsleeve.

"Soft enough to eat.  Try it."

Alex bites into the apple, where I had softened it.  

Her eyes roll back in her head.  Her fingertips convulse. Her brain blazes with pleasure as an orgasm rips through her like an explosion.  After all these years, I'd never miss the change in musk or the scent of a woman's gush.

_I did not need to know what my sister's O-face looked like..._

"Hand me that bottle," I demand.  "I need to get blackout drunk, m'kay?"

She grabs the bottle and her hand crushes it instantly.  Squawking in surprise, Alex backpedals into the fridge hard enough to dent it.

"Alex, Alex, Alex...shh.  I'm here."

I put my arms around her and for once, I can hug her, if only once.  Hug her like she's my sister and not spun glass.

"Mmm.  I like hugging you hard, like this."

"What," Alex gasps.  "The actual fuck was that?"

"Golden Apple, naturally.  The bottle was Ambrosia.  You can have the one that's left.  I can score more tonight."

"And this proves?"

I put my fists up.

"Queensbury rules?" I suggest.

"Fuck that!  You know I'm not going to go easy on you," she teases.

"Nor will I."

I kick off from the floor, soaring up and driving one fist down hard into her block.  My fist and my strength and the swinging counterweights of the heavens go into the blow before I connect.

Car alarms go off.

Every window in the apartment blows out.  

My refrigerator is reduced to a crumpled wad of vintage steel.  The gaps in the metal are leaking citrus juice, champagne and a drizzle of hummus.

"The hell?" Alex murmurs staring at her own hands.  "That was...that was...you were at full power!"

"Kara?" she whimpers.  "What am I?"

"You have the god's food…" 

I toss her the bottle.

"Drink it, woman." 

Alex sips it, groans at the taste and chugs the rest.

"The god's food and drink in your veins.  For the moment, you're more than human. Lasts until dawn tomorrow, at least it did the last time I tried it.  More of it you drink, the deeper the effect. I'll warn you that it's cocaine plus ecstasy plus heroin in terms of addiction.  Is Maggie in town?"

She shakes her head.

"Good.  You'd be fucking her with strength like mine and that takes practice."

"Kara!"

"I'm sorry!  Am I to believe that little minx doesn't have you bent over something every night?  I've seen her baby blues, Alex.  I saw how she was rubbing her foot all over you at brunch."

Alex shakes her head vigorously.

"So why did we do this, again?"

"Two reasons.  One is you can help me shop for furniture."

The apartment is ruined.  The kitchen is a crater and the dining room table splinters.  The bedroom and living room were around a corner. They should be unscathed.

"Two is this."

I call Petal to me and slice the back of my hand.  Dropping the veil I carry, I see the golden light glitter against Alex's eyes and the puddles on the floor.  I smear the blood on my thumb and forefinger

"Hold out your palm, Alex."

I press the blood into her palm.

"Lick that."

Face wrinkled in disgust, she brings her tongue to the smear.  She goes rigid, arms and legs locked. Every sinew in her hands clenched tight.

"My memories," I explain.  "Of my lovers, the war, my death, my exile.  My knowledge as a god.  Everything."

I go to the sink and manage to get the last spurt of water into my only intact glass.

Alex snaps out of it with a huge gulp of air.

"Hydration is important when expanding your mind," I joke.

She takes the glass and sips it, cautiously, like she were worried about dosage.

"It's water, sis.  So you can replenish.  What you just did -- aced it, by the way -- nearly slew  _Hercules_ on the spot.   To see in person kills the unprotected.  The face of Zeus killed Semele instantly and nearly killed her unborn son.  It's why you needed the Ambrosia."

"Thanks," she pants.  "So you're a god, huh?  I feel like that should bother me."

I laugh.

"Just don't start praying and I think you're still an atheist.  After all, you can see me. So it's still evidence-based."

Alex nods.

"We'll talk when you get back from Geneva, Alex.  The whole awful story. I promise."

"Help me out the door.  I think I need a ride home," she admits.

"Always, sister.  You always have me.  Plan V."

Alex scoffs.

"That's a terrible name for it."

"Too late."

 

* * *

 

##  **Lena Luthor**

(L-Tech One, en route to LAX -- Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

(2:33pm, 33,000 feet over Texas, nine hours into the flight from New York)

 

Aggie Kent seems singularly uncomfortable on a corporate jet.  

Her eyes keep darting to her armest and her ice water, fearfully, like she's worried she'll break something expensive.  She squeaks out a "sorry" every time the flight attendant passes by.

_Minor revenge, little one._

"I loathe it when women apologize for nothing," I remind her.  "Especially businesswomen, especially when we've earned our place at the table."

"Sor-"

Aggie catches herself, inhales, and retaliates with a smile.  A flash of sparkling teeth, an upwards curl of tulip-pink lips and a twinkle in two eyes as blue, dark and deep as the Arctic sea.  She must have noticed how her very presence tugs at whatever is left of my heart. She awakens something _domestic_ in me.  Something motherly.  A protective impulse, followed by a spike of ego and a desire to leave a bit of Lena Luthor behind me in my progeny.  It’s something far too dangerous to ever let out. The world has had more than enough Luthors.

"Thank you for the advice, ma’am.  I'll work on it."

“What’s my schedule?”

No one answers, which is unusual.

I glance over to Jess, who seems to be asleep.

“You have a VIP invite to the world premiere of _Unsafe at Any Speed,_ at seven o’clock,” Aggie fills in.  

“That’s it for today.  Tomorrow you have nothing, though I did get a note from an anonymous sender inviting you to the Wharton-Svenson Mansion in Malibu at midnight for a quote, gathering of discerning students of human nature, end quote.”

“Interesting,” I reply, though it isn’t really.  Probably some one-percenter throwing some god-awful fundraiser for a vaguely disgusting cause.

Aggie pulls out her cell phone.

“Tomorrow’s a Saturday, Madam Chairwoman.  If you don’t agree to take the weekend off and go to the event tomorrow night, I’m RSVPing for the premiere.”

“I’ll cancel it.”

“My twin sister is running the event.  She’ll lose your cancelation.”

“Why would I even _want_ to go?”

Aggie pulls out a well-worn poster, keeping it close to her chest.

“Because a brigand begs your favor, milady…”

Aggie unfolds the poster and lays it out in front of me.

“This brigand.  Hero of the tale, as it were.”

_God preserve me._

Kara is all over the cover.  In the rain, harried-looking, armed and staring death itself at some off-camera foe with a teenage girl sheltering behind her.  Looks like the studio found a new disposable sex kitten for this years movie.

Her damp hair spills over the leather jacket like molten gold.  Her scuffed knuckles jump out at the viewer as the single imperfection on her entire body.  The smoking gun in her hand and the steam rising from the barrel make me shiver. The child actress held under her other arm, protected by her, reminds me of better, safer days.  Two blue eyes even more intense than Aggie’s spear me.  Even in a photograph, she can knock the air from my lungs and derail my train of thought.  Her gaze at the camera dares me to ignore her.

I had no idea she was even an actress and here I am faced with some kind of unholy chimera, an everywoman taking cues from Marilyn Monroe’s lush curves, Marlon Brando’s aggression, Swarzenegger's inhuman stature and Jodie Foster’s falcon-like gaze.  

All that poured out for the press photographer for this years entry in a brainless car chase movie franchise.

It occurs to me how blessed I am.  Thousands will lust after her after seeing this manufactured and no doubt Photoshopped photo.  I have seen the goddess with her magic gone, her body laid bare, opened up, her legs over my shoulders and her finger between her teeth so she wouldn’t scream and wake the girl's dorm.

Heard her breath catch when my fingers twitch.  Heard my name screamed from that marble-smooth and snow-white throat.  Seen a Smith College t-shirt plastered to her curves by a spring rainstorm.  Had the goddess hands and thigh and her tongue between my own legs, the divine worshipping the wretched.

_Poor bastard had no idea who he was photographing, did he?_

“Too late,” Aggie jokes, tapping a text message out.  “Kara texted me back. She’s so excited you’re coming.”

“Wear something nice,” Aggie whispers.  

“Oh,” I squeak.  “Right.”

Jess harrumphs and rolls over, pulling the blanket over her head.

“At least Lena listens to you, kid.  Goddamned superpower, if you ask me.  How much per hour?”

Aggie screws her eyes up towards the ceiling.

"California minimum wage, round up, carry the two, multiply to the power of four, divide by the square root of 4,600..."

_Brat._

That's not exactly  _my_ hourly rate but it's a sum many Ivy League graduates would lust after, right out of college, let alone their junior year of high school.

"Just let me know," Jess groans.  "You're hired."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, ser-"

The door to the cockpit flies open.

He starts shooting.  The first spray spreads Jess' brains over the seat behind her, rakes across Aggie's chest and slams into my gut. 

"Lex sends his regar-"

The man's head falls on the carpet at my feet twisted off like the top of a Coke bottle.  Aggie Kent stands over him, panting.  Seven neat holes in her blouse and seven coin-like lumps of steel on the floor by her seat reveal his fatal mistake.

 _Interesting,_ I think, staring at the confetti-like spiral of broken vertebrae.

I did enough anatomy in college to know what a pierced intestine smells like.  I put my hand to my belly and pull it back, wet and red.  I can feel the blood on my hands and see it soaking my legs but I cannot feel that.  Neither dampness nor pain, not below my ribs.

 _Figures,_ I decide. _I probably hired him._

 "I'm sorry, Jess."

 

 

* * *

**Alex Danvers**

(LAX Airport, Gate 34B - Arrival + 10 years, Reunion Day)

(3:06pm)

 

"Now boarding SwissAir Flight 237 to Bangkok, Athens and Geneva."

I pull out my phone.

 **Ally:** **Found a new favorite drink, Mags.**

 **Mags:** **Oh?**

 **Ally:** **Yeah.  You have GOT to try it.**

 **Mags:** **Are you trying to take advantage of a drunk lady?**

 **Ally:** **Always, babe.  Always.**

 **Mags:** **Shooting you the address now.  #WishYouWereHere #Gaycation**

She sends me a map pin.

_Coast of Lesbos?  Subtle, Mags._

"Please turn your cell phone off."

I flick my left thumb across the touchscreen. 

"Biometric confirmed.  Zero-emission mode engaged," the earpiece tells me.

The screen goes blank.  Only the faintest blinking of the auxiliary backlight gives any clue it's turned on.  One that would be invisible without these shades.  I size up the kid doing the check-ins.  Lanky and clumsy with the last of his teenage acne hidden with some concealer.  

_It's amazing any flight makes it, if he's our best line of defense._

"Empty your pockets."

I empty one pocket.  Just one.

My wallet clatters into the tray, face up and badge out.  I slid the US Marshall's badge template in and programmed the LCD with my picture and the ID number before I got out of the car.  Without a 1000x microscope combined with a high-clearance individual placing a call to the head of the DOJ, he's not proving it fake.

"Federal Agent."

"Uh...empty your pockets."

I groan.

"Federal Agent means my presence here _,_ " I remind him, waving a hand at the gathering crowd.  "Is exactly  _what_ keeps these good people safe.  The _why_ of it is none of your concern."

"That says 'US Marshall' on it, not 'do whatever' on it.  Rules are rules. Gotta empty your pockets, lady."

"Get your supervisor, kid.  Now."

Within ten seconds of showing up, the supervisor waves me through, overrides the metal detector and hands me my wallet.

"Sorry, ma'am."

"New guy?"

"New guy for this month," she sighs.  "I'll get a new new guy next month, the way things have been going."

I click my tongue.

"He did stand up to me when I explained myself.  Didn't cave. Most of the time, they jump out of the way.  Something to be said for stubborn in his job. Get him trained and settled in and you might have somebody."

"Huh.  Might be on to something there.  Enjoy your flight, ma'am."

"Layovers in Thailand and Greece.   What's not to like?" I joke.

As I browse the overpriced perfume, I slide my backpack off my shoulders and lay it down by the cell phone cases.  Walking slowly around the display, I pick up the identical backpack on the other side.

It growls at me.

“Easy, Gertrude.”

I crack the zipper just a bit and see the Jack Russell’s tail whipping back and forth inside the bag.  The agency-issued collar is around her neck and the emotional support animal vest cinched tight. Both of them are graphene-weave and a near-invisible, slash-proof and bullet-proof 'catsuit' for dogs sits under Gertie's vest, covering ninety-percent of her body.  It even feels fluffy, as I learned when I broke regs and gave her a belly rub.  Over a million dollars of research into armored doggy clothes, protecting far more research into anti-terrorism dog training and handling.

Inside her leash is a tear-away garrotte tough enough to go through a four-inch oak sapling in thirty seconds, or sever a man's spine in a tenth of that.

If my hunch is right, there are at least three terrorists on this flight and four bombs...and with Gertie and her nose here to back me up, those guys are _so fucked._

"You'll love Greece, girl."

**Yip!  Yip! Yip!**

 

* * *

 

##  **Kara / Venus or Aphrodite**

(Los Angeles, California – Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

(6:45pm)

 

The Ducati's many-cylindered heart throbs between my legs.  A gift from Diana but I can feel Minerva's essence on every inch of it, along with another.  Bellona? Who knows what strange 'customizations' this beast has.

I accelerate and zip between two LAPD cruisers at a hundred twenty five, neither of the officers so much as batting an eyelash.  In the rearview is a smear of distortion, like the world behind me was paint that a toddler had dragged their fingers through. A gap in light and radio, courtesy of a black hole twenty nine thousand light-years off, one that trails me like the stain on the pavement.

I'm hungry. 

I could claim it's because I spent the afternoon sweeping what amounted to shrapnel into the building's dumpster, bookmarking replacements for Sister Shopping Day or ordering delivery of some basics.  

I could claim it's because I gave Alex my apple and my ambrosia and because a pancake breakfast that might well have strained the delivery boy's back just isn't the same.

It's not.  

It's four text messages, each of which created a separate knot of anxiety in my belly.  

Minerva.  **Wouldn't miss it.  Gray dress with chainmail accents.  Full coverage, of course. I'll come in with the security detail from Gaia.  If you'd prefer, no one need ever know we're together.**

Diana. **Red.  Backless.  High-cut. No heels.  Meet me at the wine and don't expect to keep your virtue long.**

Bellona.  I **will be with my daughter at the staff table.   PS: Ruby says hi.**

From my niece, my little spy in Lena's kingdom.  **Black Pawn here.  White Queen will be there.  She turned even whiter when I gave her your reply.**

Lena is coming back to me.  I can offer her all my love, my whole being, as I did five years ago the day we broke up.  I can offer her a palace and servants and help her rediscover her own goddess-head...or she might break me again.

I pull up outside Gruman's Chinese Theatre and kill the engine.  The paps will be on me soon, followed by the legitimate reporters with their moronic questions about 'having it all' and 'family plans'.  My magic can delay them no more than a moment, seeing as how they are driven by actual hunger, the need for thousands of souls to know a tiny bit about me.

Minerva has tried.  It's not knowledge they seek.

Mischief is a more likely root cause.  Pity that Mercury died in the war. Of the men in the family, he was more likable than the rest.  Better to women than even Apollo was and compared to Jupiter, like a kitten compared to a warthog.

"Hottie in the vest!" I shout, pulling the keys out and winging them towards a dapper young woman with a cockscomb haircut and a tattoo on her neck, like a barcode but rendered in rainbow stripes.

"Park her somewhere nice, yeah?"

As I walk by her, I tuck three fifties in her breast pocket and when my hand lingers, she whines like a starved dog.

_That was unkind.  Hmm. Wonder who I can point her way?_

I let my hand linger over her heart for another instant--shorter than the flash of a paparazzi's camera--so I can get a reading on her.  She likes women. Big women. Soft women that she can bury her slim, sinewy body in the arms of. Has strap-on, will travel. Prides herself on her partner's pleasure, and is ashamed of her own, poor dear.  Sounds like my co-star, Esperanza, gets that rebound relationship after all. A new fix-her-up to love into a million pieces and rebuild into something more whole.

"Burn this into your brain.  423-918-0281. Tell no one who she is.  When she texts you, answer," I whisper. "Protip:  she likes to be tossed around."

"Siobahn," she rasps.  "My name."

"Kara.  Pleasure."

"Thanks, Kara."

Dead ahead is the Pack.  Fifty to a hundred photographers and a dozen journalists with microphones and video cameras.

_Three hundred Spartans marched to certain death in a sea of Persians.  I held their widows whilst they wailed. "Our arrows shall blot out the sun," Xerxes said._

Glancing up, I have an inkling what he meant.  The moon is gone. She has been gobbled up by the glare of constant flashbulbs.

"Kara!"  "What are your plans?"

"Kara!"  "How does it feel to complete your first feature film?"

"Kara!"  "What are you wearing?"

I find the one who spoke last, the one with the moronic question about clothes.  

I slither out of my motorcycle jacket, making sure that the photographers get a good look at the gown.  Centuries since I last held a bolt of silk or linen or a spool of golden thread, fresh from the suffering of Aracne.  Still got it.

I motion to the paps in front of him, two flicks of the fingers to indicate that they really don't want to be in my way.

"Move."

One of them tries to get a what--armpit shot?--only to find that his camera is fouled by the sudden appearance of a micrometeor in the workings.  Tiny, hot, and traveling with the last bit of its speed, it appears behind the lens and falls until it smashes the sensor.

"Found it at Green Dreams thrift shop," I tell the girl with the question.  "Forty bucks. Highly recommend it. You want it? It's yours."

I flop the motorcycle jacket over her and her camera and walk away.

"Okay," she mumbles, muffled by the jacket.  "Hint taken."

"Good girl!" I chortle, patting her leather-capped head.

"Smells nice," she mumbles.

_Perfume like none on Earth, woman-child._

Escaping the paps is easier than invading them was, now that they've seen I will humiliate one of their own and that I'm not afraid to risk a lawsuit by touching them.

A small man in a green sweater appears beside me.

"Uh, hi, I'm your new PA."

"Uh, hi," I reply.  "What in Hades is a PA?"

He blinks at me, rubs his half-shaven chin and gestures to the door with a flourish.

"This way, ma'am.  I'll explain as we go."

Someone has lined the entryway with mirrors.  Garish in the extreme and I can say that with confidence, having once set mirrors into the entirety of the eastern ramparts of my palace so that I could lay in bed, face west, and see both myself and the light of dawn.

"What's your name?"

"Winn."

"Keeping it simple.  Smart. Like Madonna does."

"Well, Winnslow Schott, Jr."

"Ah.  Do I need to worry about senior?" I joke.  "You don't look old enough for a 9-5 job."

He really doesn't.  

There's a lot to like but not a lot of maturity to it.  Handsome lad with touches of strong Semitic stock in his skin tone, the richness of his stubble and warm, keen brown eyes.  Big hands an a compact, burly build. Small perhaps was the wrong term. Everything other men got in height, he got in a barrel chest and stout limbs.  Something nice for a good Jewish girl to look at every morning, a few years from now.  

One never knows a person, not without asking them, but I can guess.  When we're friends and when he wants to talk about it, I can ask.

"No," he replies, coming to a sudden stop.  "My father is no longer a threat."

"Whoa!" I sputter.  "No longer a threat?  That's kinda hardcore, bro.  You all right?"

He shakes his head.  

"Don't like to think about him."

"Sorry."

Winn shrugs.

"So, what the hell is a PA, again?  New girl, here."

"Personal assistant," he replies after he manages to make his feet work again.

"Uh-huh.  Not sure what I need an assistant for.  I'm already toilet-trained, promise."

He snort-laughs.

"Good, that's a relief."

"You're not serious!"

He becomes very interested in looking over there.

"Mercy!  Well, I promise you a less shitty job."

"Thanks."

He inhales.

"So I take your calls, schedule you with your agent, make sure scripts get delivered, keep perverts and fans off your back, do shopping trips, fetch snacks, relay the boss' instructions, et cetera, et cetera."

"The boss?  Cat Grant?"

"Mmm," he replies.  "Tough lady."

"I like those."

The instant I enter the hall, I peel back my outermost veil, the one that gives the illusion of flaws, that encourages people not to stare.  

A hundred pairs of eyes follow me, drawn by desire and passion.  Perhaps six in ten are set into male faces. Winn's do not, I notice.

_Gaydar, meet gaymagnetism._

The rumors of bisexuality being a fad or a publicity stunt for female actresses were greatly exaggerated.  Attention-seeking does not blend with my magic--more likely with Apollo's--only lust and longing.

If only I could explain this to the Kinsey Institute.  They could have a field day.

"What's his name?" I whisper to Winn.  "Your boyfriend."

"How did you know?"

A rhythmic clanking sound travels the edge of the room, just past the floodlighting, moving in the shadows.

"A bit of space, Winn?"

I'm only half surprised to see Diana and not Minerva stepping out from the phalanx's ranks.  These are the honor guard. Three score of Themyscira's boldest hearts, sturdiest bodies, and keenest minds.  Never more than ten heartbeat's sprint from their god-queen's side by ancient law.  

Some of the girls are still filling out their mail.  Uplifted from mortal lives, I suppose.

Her dress would horrify the priestesses back home.  All of it for my benefit and not the men's but they have the same view I do.  One slash in the fabric -- left rough, to resemble a weapon's cutting -- from the edge of her collarbone to her navel.  Bronze-dusted skin a shade darker than any other Olympian. A reminder of her wild days in the forests. Carved into the skin are valleys and ruts and fissures, outlining sinews from a lifetime of sprinting after prey, leaping over branches and pinning me to trees, moss-covered boulders, and tapestry-adorned walls.  Another slit on the side, long but narrow, so that I might count her ribs with my fingertips. Up the side of her right leg, toes to thigh. Just enough to make me wonder if I could lift the silk and slide under. If I could get my lips on her clit without removing the dress.

I doubt she could be wearing anything under it.  Magic is surely involved in keeping it attached. Double-sided tape would not suffice.  

"Diana," I choke.

 **_What's this?  Love herself struck speechless?_ ** She teases in my mind.

"I suppose one of us had to wear a movie star dre-"

Then her lips are on mine.  Her hands are on my cheeks, gripping my jaw, locking it in place.  She holds her lips against mine. Not pushing, just breathing, just remembering, I suspect.  Remembering like I am. Remembering that first brush, when she wasn't sure she should or that I would enjoy it.

I reach up and brush my thumb on her lower lip.

**_Open, Diana, my love.  Let me actually kiss you._ **

**_Ask me to open, and you'll spread more than my lips, darling!_** she replies. ** _Twenty centuries, three years, six months, four days, nine hours.  Every instant of it wasted._**

Secretspeak is as delicious as I remember.  Whatever magic Minerva found, it's the sweetest secret of our union.  If only mortal creatures could share it...the voice of one's lover, echoing through the crevices of the mind like music.

"I'll go distract people, shall I?" Winn offers.

Diana pushes him away with a careless fist.  Like a cat swatting a dog.

Then she parts her lips.  I taste everything I can. The tip of her tongue, already tasting richly of wine.  A flick across the all-too-tender underside, making her knees quake. Then I retreat, daring her to follow, to taste me.

She does.

Somewhere, thousands of leagues away, the movie starts.

 

* * *

 

## Alex Danvers

(SwissAir Flight 237 to Bangkok, Athens and Geneva -- Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

(33,000 feet over the Pacific, fifty-five minutes after takeoff)

(6:53pm)

 

Three trips to the bathroom and I've only found one of them.  

_At this rate, I'm going to develop a reputation._

Gertrude, ever the pro, hopped up on his lap.  Charming as could be. Snuggling and pawing and smearing the marking chemical on her paws all over him.  That's her secret. She doesn't _growl_ at bad guys.  That makes them nervous.  She just can't get enough of the bad guys and it's cute so they don't suspect.  She smears them in explosives-sensitive dye and with my shades on, I can see bright green where the bomb vest is, a dull emerald shade where he must be keeping his gun and the less-volatile gunpowder, everything.

His seat is marked and the camera in the 'wad of gum' I pressed against a doorframe keeps an eye on him.  Grainy due to the crappy WiFi but real-time. If he leaves his seat, I follow and he never gets back to it alive.

I also tagged everyone with a medical device broadcasting to their cell phones.  I may have to slip back to doctor mode once the threats are gone. Chances are the fellow with a pacemaker is going to need a check after this flight.

The problem is that The Lord's Blade has never worked in teams of less than four.  It's one of the hard-and-fast rules of fighting them, just like it's an unspoken truth that Morgan Edge is funding them.

"You okay?" the brunette next to me asks.  "Your dog is super cute, by the way. I know I shouldn't but I petted her.  Like, a lot. I'm Nia. Nia Nal."

Gertie is in Nia's lap and has smeared a truly terrifying amount of dye on her.  All of it negative. Must be the smile that broke Gertie's discipline.  

Nia's smile is like a flashbang to the face.  After seeing it, seeing something so brilliant and pure, I can't see the other lights.

"Elaine.  Elaine Donahue."

I remain convinced that the only person on earth who knows my middle name is my mother.  It'll do for this. 

_Oh, shit._

She is licking her fingers with a far-off, glassy-eyed look of bliss.

"Nia…" I tease.  "Did you steal my lunch?"

"It was a really great lunch!" she whines.  "I gave some to the pup. I googled it. A teensy bit is safe for doggies."

I don't think vets ever actually treated a dog fed a slice of golden apple soaked in ambrosia.  I owe Kara a bottle, an apple and an apology.  

_If I pray, would Kara hear it?_

"Aphrodite Ouranos, hear my plea," I whisper.

"How are you, sis?"

I twitch in surprise, hard enough to bang my head on the seat in front of me.

"So, my seatmate gave some of the apple to the dog."

"The apple...what?  Oh. You skank!" Kara teases.  "You made off with my stash."

"Performance-enhancing chemical," I explain.  "For safety."

"Yeah, that's not going to increase your safety during a _workout_ , Alex.  Other things, yes. I wish you'd tell me more about your job.  I worry."

"Whose voice is that?" Nia whispers.  "Who's Alex?"

"Who the blazes are you, woman?" Kara demands.

"Seatmate," I explain.  "Who ate the rest of my apple.  Her name's Nia Nal."

"Hoo boy, kid.  Nia, you are in for a _ride_.  Feel any different?"

"I, uh, I have a really good feeling that if I posted something, it'd go viral?  I'm an influencer slash activist, for...uh..."

_For the trans community._

"I can see the flag and the buttons on your backpack, Nia.  S'cool. I'm going to meet my lady for a Greek vacation," I remind her.  "On a certain island…"

Nia giggles.

"Do it, Nia.  Post it," Kara commands.  "I'll let you know where it goes."

"Alex?  I can hear it in your voice.  Whoever you're fighting? Win.  Gotta go. Only so long you can keep an Amazon at ba-unnh!"

"Right there, Di.  Easyeasyeasy! She's still sensitive!"  Kara scolds.

_Crap.  How do I hang up a prayer?_

Turns out the link just fades.  Quite quickly, if I am desperately trying to will myself not to know what it sounds like hearing Wonder Woman eat out my kid sister.

"What fight?" Nia asks.

She starts to reach for the intercom.  I seize her hand.

"Don't.  I'm part of a task force.  Front pocket. Your side. My wallet."

Nia fishes my wallet out.

"Air marshal?"

"Among other things.  But sure, let's say it's only that."

"There's four right-wing terrorists on this flight.  White males. Church clothes or business clothes. Each one has control of a different bomb.  I've only found one."

"Ohh-kay," Nia replies.  "What do you need from me?"

I hand her my thermos.

"That apple was laced with something.  Squeeze that, would you?"

Nia shrieks in surprise when she does and manages to crumple it into a tennis-ball-sized mess.  The shards of glass shatter on her skin.

"So congratulations, Nia.  You're drafted. Taken any self-defense classes?"

She nods.

"Knife blocks?"

She nods again.

"Knife attacks?"

She blushes and then nods.

"Trans woman in Trump's America?  I totally understand. What else?"

"Gun safety.  Gun disarms. Basic firearms training."

"Krav Maga?" I ask.

She nods.

"And something I, fuck.  I always forget the name," Nia grumbles.  "It's Soviet."

"How many years?"

"Since I was ten."

_She does Combat Sambo and Krav Maga?  She was the second-most-dangerous person on the flight the whole time._

"Perfect.  Put Gertie back in here."

"She's not a normal service dog, is she?" Nia asks, sadly.  Like the poor beast had betrayed her by cuddling.

"Nope. Millions of dollars in government training.  So back in the armored backpack she goes until this is over."

Gertie whines and reaches her little paws for Nia.

"Hussy," I chuckle.

 

* * *

 

##  **Kara / Venus or Aphrodite**

(Los Angeles, California – Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

(7:38pm)

 

It takes more effort than I expected.

Begging, no help.

Reversing gravity in the ladies -- to the surprise of the gal in the next stall -- no help.

All the might of my body, paired with the force of a thousand comets striking a thousand barren rocks in a thousand places in the cosmos…and she barely budges.

"Di," I gasp.  "Enough, enough, enough."

Putting both thumbs on the circlet given to her by her Amazonian aunt, I push back with everything I have left.  She pulls off with a sniffle.

Diana's cheeks are red from the heat.  Her eyes are a madwoman's, pupils blown and scratchy from crying.  Juices run from her cheeks to her neck, down between the valley of her breasts.  Shucking off my high heels, I capture the last trickle before it can stain her dress at the vee, the crevice of fabric just a hand's breath from her own sex.

I raise my foot slowly, staring, entranced by the shine on the skin and the woman who drew it out of me.  Before I can get my feet under me, her hands grab my ass and push up. She captures my foot and sucks my toes, one, then the other, cleaning them.

"Diana, we have _forever,_ quite literally."

She nods.

"I'm sorry."

"No apologies, love.  But you don't like being _seen,"_ I remind her.

"I wasn't naked," she jokes.  "Neither were you."

_This from the girl who mutilated a man who caught her bathing._

"I want you on my arm, Di.  Let's give them something to talk about, shall we?"

 

* * *

 

##  **Catherine "Cat" Redstone-Grant (** ** _nee_** **Redstone, preferred)**

(Los Angeles, California – Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

(7:42pm)

 

"Where," I snarl, "is she?"

"Busy," Winn croaks.

"Well, she is my employee and I expect replies to my questions.  When you see her, tell her she's fired."

"R-r-really?"

Throwing back the rest of my champagne, I snap my fingers at the server.  He takes the empty flute and provides another.  

"Of course.  I bought this company for its assets and its reputation, which I intend to raze and rebuild.  I'll not have a star -- even her -- sleeping around and continuing Harvey's legacy."

Winn's cheeks color.

"Ma'am, when you see who she's with, I assure you you'll change your mind.  I'll text her again…"

His fingers dance over the keyboard of his phone and I notice a gothic, black-and-crimson desktop picture.  His phone also has a well-hidden bump at the back which seems to have various high-tech connectors which were _not_ installed by Motorola.  My nephew -- poor awkward thing he is -- once regaled me with a four-hour explanation of how hard it was to open, resolder, and alter a cell phone.  Carter loved the talk, at least.

_Computer whiz?  Why is he a PA, then?_

"Aha!  This time, she replied."

"Ms Grant?" someone purrs, just out of my field of view.

I'd seen the press photos and I'd assumed that James Olsen's usual wizardry as a portraitist and heavy photoshopping was involved.  

Apparently not.

What Kara's wearing isn't really even heels -- an inch tops -- and she stares me eye-to-eye while I'm in six-inch Louboutins.  No, I realize, when I feel my neck pinch. I'm looking up at her, at least slightly.  

She offers her hand.  Her long, slim-fingered, snow-white hand closes around mine and shakes.  Something tells me she could crush my bones to powder and pull my arm out of the socket yet the feel of her hand makes me smile, restraint be damned.

"Winn said I was fired?" she jokes, cocking her head.

A hundred ringlets of golden hair spill across her left arm and dance amid the scoop neckline of her dress, tickling her cleavage.  The dress is white but for some golden embroidery and is closer to a peasant dress than a red carpet affair. It hangs off her loosely, only revealing a curve of a thigh or the swell of a breast when she moves.

The outlines of two stiff nipples through the thin fabric of Kara's dress and a smug, tired look on her dates face are more than enough to explain the delay.

"What the devil are you wearing?  A mumu?" I demand.

Kara's eyes -- bottomless and blue like the sapphire on my finger -- somehow glow, something so icy and bright that all I see is white.

"Handmade," she replies, clearly irritated.  "Hand-cut, hand-dyed, hand-stitched. Ancient techniques.  A lost art that predates Rome's founding. As was half my wardrobe for _Unsafe_ , saving your company tens of thousands of dollars.  There's nothing worth it for a size seventeen, not in this city."

_Seventeen?  She can't be._

Then I remember that she's in flats, more or less.   Carter hugged me goodbye before the show and when he rested his chin on my shoulder, I could've died happy.  The poor boy's first-ever growth spurt took him to six-two. A clumsy, unfinished six-two who will no doubt suffer every insult his middle school peers can concoct.

Kara has the frame of a WNBA player with the flesh of a plus-size model stretched across it.  She must be six-six, six-seven, maybe six-eight and probably has sixty pounds on little old me, and doesn't look anything like fat.  She looks _succulent._ Urges that haven't surfaced since junior year at Harvard come back with a vengeance.  I want to put my arms around her waist. I want to straddle her hips, just to see if I could.  To mark her breasts and her throat and her belly with love bites. To bury myself in the soft flesh before me.  To wear those milky thighs around my neck.  

_Pity she's an employee…_

I wince.

_Who am I?  Harvey? Get a grip, Cat!_

The woman on her arm is black-haired, tanned, and thin.  Quite different from Kara herself with her powdered-sugar complexion, hair like butter and strawberry lips.  Everything about Kara makes me hungry and not only for food.  

The mystery lady, on the other hand, makes my skin itch and it feels like it's itching on the inside, not the outside.  _Fight or flight,_ I realize. It doesn't last long, the fear.

She is slender and her hips are narrower -- aren't everyone's? -- than Kara and would be little-girl lanky, prepubescent really, but for a pair of breasts that I suspect I could break a tooth on, filling her crimson dress nicely and anchoring it so that the plunge can reveal six-pack abs and the first hints of a whole new expanse of muscle below her navel.  Her eyes watch me, almost unblinking like a lioness watches a hyena. One more poorly chosen word and I will find out what her date can do with those biceps.  

On the other hand, perhaps some flattery might earn me a couple of rounds?  With a core like that, I suspect she could hammer me into the mattress for days.

_Again with the gay panic?  Something strange is going on here._

Kara's eyes flit from me to her date, sensing the impasse.

"I could eat," Kara declares.  "Grapes, love?"

"And the lamb, if they have it.  Minerva will know where," she jokes.

Kara threads her hands through her date's hair, turns her and sinks into a kiss.

"Back soon, Di."

Kara leaves, pulling glances from almost every male and every third female present.  

_Christ, she's a walking Kinsey scale._

I turn back to Kara's date.

"A lady willing to admit she eats," I tease.  "Brave."

"Diana, is it?"

Winn taps my shoulder, holding up his phone.

"Uh, miss Grant?" he hisses.  "Look!"

I glance over and see the Wikipedia article for Wonder Woman.  Then I look back and realize I'm staring right at her. The golden-brown skin. The sizzling green flecks in her golden eyes and the razor-straight slant of her nose.  The proud, hard edges of her jaw and the equally sharp cheekbones ghosting below her skin.  

I swallow everything else I ever was planning to say to this woman and just to be safe, I start coming up with excuses for every catty put-down and unsupportive comment I've ever lobbed at my own PA.

If feminism has a physical incarnation, it's Diana Prince.  If raw power has one, it's Wonder Woman. I just ruined both ego and alter-ego's date night.  

"It's the dress, isn't it?" she jokes, grabbing the ruffles around her hips and shaking the narrow skirt playfully.  "Not my usual. Less metal, more skin."

I suck air back into my lungs.  It's like the moment where the hero cuts the right wire.  

"I suppose it is," I joke.

"What brings my girlhood idol to such a humble gathering?" I whisper, offering my arm.

Diana loops hers through it.

"Why love, of course."

She nods towards Kara, who has struck up a conversation with a buff, dark-skinned lady with little more than a buzz cut and a flattering but ankle-to-neck dress.  To either side of Kara's friend sit six fidgety Amazons, clearly uncomfortable with the setting. That or they're horny.  Seeing the various waitresses and starlets and actor's spouses and wishing they could both look and touch.

_Minerva?_

"When you said Minerva," I prod.  "You meant _Minerva._   Didn't you?"

"Mmm," Diana purrs.  "Thank you," she tells a server after plucking a fistful of grapes and a flute of red wine.

"Minerva, though she prefers her old name.  Athena.  There are four goddesses in your hall tonight, the last of Olympus.  Along with goddess-to-be.  I'll leave the others for to you to guess."

I halfway choke on my own wine.  Diana pats my back gently to help me cough it out.  

"God."

"Goddesses," Diana chortles.  "You'll learn quickly. Or I'll have her turn you into a Gorgon if you _ever_ hurt Kara in any way.  Or perhaps I'll turn you into a stag so I might train my hounds.  Am I clear?"

"Crystal."

"Good.  Rejoice, Cat!" Diana teases, thumping me on the back with nearly enough force to double me over.

"Venus herself allows her divine likeness to be defiled by your cameras.  You'll be a wealthy woman, if you behave yourself."

_Venus is Kara?   Our Kara?  What?_

At that exact moment, a flash of scarlet light fills the room and a moment later, the ceiling over the stage falls in.  Kara is nowhere to be seen but the fading trail of light and red flame leads straight up, so I can guess.

Diana grabs her cell phone.  Knowing she's a goddess helps because she carried no purse and that's not a dress with pockets.  I don't have to wonder how she hid it.  

I can hear wind and static, even over the phone line.

"Beloved, what is it?"

Whatever she hears _enrages_ Diana.  

"Amazons!" she bellows.  "Seal the doors. No one leaves.  First rank!  To me!"

Her dress dissolves into something silvery and molten and so bright I cannot look.

For a moment, Wonder Woman stands before me and then she too is gone.  The flash burns away the easy smile, the easy lie to the cameras that she is 'glad to help' and that 'anyone would have done the same' if they had her gifts.

Wonder Woman's famous, red and blue armor has been scuffed by Nazi artillery and polished again by the hands of laughing children she rescues.  What she wears now has the same decorations: an eagle, a crescent moon, a baying hound and a sprig of laurel.  These are solid gold though, not beaten steel.  

My eyes water just to look at it.

She is wrapped in layer upon layer of tiny, immaculate chains.  It is mirror-shiny and reflecting the moon, even indoors, so brightly it might as well be made of light not steel.  Her hair is black as smoke and it whips behind her in a gust of wind that smells like pine needles before braiding itself into a tight bun.  A sword hangs at her hip and a square shield is across her back. On it is a bow and arrow crossing a golden outline of the crescent moon.  

Before I realize it, to either side are three Amazons, back to back to back, helmet violets lowered, shields locked and spears out.  A pair of triangular phalanxes.  The disguise has fallen away from them too and I realize that they had been wearing steel plate under their tuxes all night, spending hours upon hours in metal heavier than a weightlifter could easily shoulder in competition.

I stand in the presence of Diana, the queen of Themiscrya and apparently one of its patron goddesses to boot.  

"Kneel, miss Grant!" Winn hisses, not lifting his own head.

The huntress herself turns to face me, having been made aware of my faux pas.  Her dark irises flash with silver light.  She is pissed.  

"Forgive me," I whisper, pressing myself to the tiles.

She takes off running, leaps over a row of three banquet tables and lands in the VIP section.  A longbow made of gleaming steel is in her hands, pulled back far as it can be. Notched in it and no more than six inches from the victim's face is an arrow made of nothing but light.

"Johnathan Lasseter of the House of Disney.  I, Artemis, protector of virgins, maidens and young women, do accuse you of rape.  I mark you, your fathers and your sons as unfit to grace a woman's presence so long as the moon rises.  I do attaint you as an enemy of the race of women."

His date for the evening -- hardly old enough to sling hot dogs at Disneyland -- squirms away from him.

"I did it," he babbles.  "It was wrong, but I did it.  Because I liked the way she su-"

A gladiator-sandled foot strikes out and he topples into his soup.  He's alive, judging by the occasional bubble he blows.  

_Fuck.  She just cold-clocked the head of Disney._

She draws her lasso, which sizzles in her hands.  All around the room, smaller lights join it. Including in my glass of champagne and in every dirty dish on every table.  

"Dust from a thread of my lasso," she calls out, loud enough everyone hears it.  "Is in your blood now."

"Hestia compels you.  You can speak only the truth!" she calls out, loud enough that no one missed it.

"Has anyone here taken advantage of women?  Answer me!"

"Tell me everything," she snarls. "Spare no detail."

"Winn," I growl.  "I want every cell phone video taken here tonight, am I clear?"

He opens his mouth to protest.  I roll my eyes.

"Long as you pay for my lawyer," he sighs.

 

* * *

  

## Alex Danvers

(SwissAir Flight 237 to Bangkok, Athens and Geneva -- Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

(33,000 feet over the Pacific, three hours after takeoff)

(10:04pm)

 

_First class.  Why didn't I think of that?_

Most of the men here are either playboys with 'dates' for this trip, or are snuggled against their trophy wives or their well-connected cougars or are enraged loners shouting into Bluetooth headsets.  One goateed, swarthy young dandy is relaxing against a rounded teddy-bear of a man twice his age. Non-platonically. Both look so happy my teeth ache.

So I zero in on the sour-looking one. Not a hard choice.

"Whiskey?" I purr.

"No, thank you.  I don't drink. Water."

I grab the bottle, carefully probed with a needle and injected with dye.  Removing the cap -- as per protocol, according to the flight attendant I'm subbing for -- I wait for a hint of turbulence then stumble forward, spilling it all over him.

"I'm terribly sorry!" I sputter.

"I'll get you fired…" he snarls.

_Wait for it, wait for it…_

Through my glasses, the UV dye lights him up like Times Square on New Year's Eve.  Unless he uses plastic explosives laced soap, he's the tinker. The bomb builder. Usually, they're the craziest ones.

Terrorist Number Four.

"Nia," I whisper into my earpiece.  "Now."

"Federal agent!" I shout, holding my badge aloft in one hand and drawing my knife with the other.  I put the blade through his hand and twist, ruining every bone there. Smashing his arm against the armrest with my foot, I zip-tie his hand closed around the dead-man's trigger.

Everyone in first class is screaming.

"Under national security directive 82318, you have been declared an enemy combatant.  Due to extreme circumstances, you will be neutralized."

I put the knife in his neck and twist.  Nine inches of space-age ceramic sharper than a scalpel.  Quick and largely painless. Some residual nerve activity may transmit a few more flashes, but nothing so complex as pain.

"Sound off, soldier," I growl into my headset.

I hear only the sound of blows landing.

"Lady, a little help?" Nia shouts.

The sound of a man screaming can be heard.

"Pepper spray's a bitch, ain't it?" Nia chortles.  "Nice one, sister!"

Crunch.

Then I hear Nia retching.  She's never killed before.  

"Two out of three," she reports.

"I know you didn't ask for this, kid.  Stick with me."

"Yeah," she pants.  "I got ya. Guessing these guys are Chik-Fil-A fans anyway..."

An explosion at the front of the craft blows out the doors.  

The plane's nose pitches down.  Outside the terrorist's window, I can see two plumes of orange flame.  

_Fuck._

"Strap in!" I shout.

"Heimdall!  Analysis," I demand.

"Stand by."

My cell phone routes signals off satellites, cell towers, fiber optics, and find a nondescript warehouse in Ohio.  A supercomputer unlike any other replies. Heimdall is the reason they let me kill these sisterfucking hicks. His targeting and threat-projecting are incredible.  When he calls it credible, the higher-ups sign the kill authorizations.

"Heartbeat triggers.  With all terrorists dead, bombs were detonated.  Assume engines and cockpit," Heimdall replies. "Chance of survival 23.1 percent and dropping."

_That's way more aggressive than they've before.  Usually, they hijack on a Sunday morning, grab some turbans, pretend they speak Arabic and demand that everybody not in church is arrested, then execute onesy-twosey._

"You!" I shout, jabbing my finger at a flight attendant.  "Find anyone with piloting experience. Check licenses and get them to the cockpit.  ASAP." 

She nods.

"You!" 

I shake my knife at the air marshall, a Latina with a boxer's build that her pantsuit is barely hiding.  She didn't know I was here, let alone that I knew she was here.

"Me?" she squeaks.

"Marshall Vasquez, right?"

She nods.

"Agent Danvers.  Department of Homeland Security, Directive 52-G.  I need you to check the passengers and notify me of any medical emergencies.  If there are any active-duty military on the flight, get them operational and get them on our six.   Then join me in the cockpit."

"Yes ma'am," Vasquez replies.

As I pass a shaking flight attendant, I grab her shoulder and squeeze.

"I've been in worse.  There's a dog in a backpack.  Seat 217F. Bring her up front, please.  Sit with her."

She nods. 

"Give me a breather."

She pulls an oxygen bottle off the rack and hands it to me.

 _Short puffs,_ I remind myself.

The cockpit door was breached by suicide vest.  There was a fifth terrorist: the navigator. Shaped charge, by the look of it.  Half the man's ribcage is still there and the vest had a steel backplate. The cockpit door was flung out the windscreen along with the top two-thirds of the copilot.

The pilot is slumped against the controls, breathing raggedly.  Red puddles have formed under his shirt from shrapnel wounds. I pull him out of his seat and cut his shirt open.  Hopefully, the terrorist didn't have any nasty diseases.

 _Bloodborne contamination can be handled on the ground,_ I remind myself.

Fuck.  The pilot has a collapsed lung and a perforated intestine if I'm being optimistic.  I have a dirty knife, gloves, a blowtorch and an electronics repair toolkit. I can save him or I can land the plane.  Not both. Hopefully when Vasquez tosses the aircraft, there's an ER doctor or a combat medic aboard.

"Problem!" Heimdall squeaks in my ear.  He sounds terrified except that 'he' is 'it' and it is just a few billion lines of code.

_The emotional 'upgrade' last week is a bit too good._

"What is it, buddy?"

"Broadcast from the aircraft.  A manifesto."

"Are they identifying themselves?  As a Christian group."

"Yes."

"Let it out," I tell him.  "Use my auth codes. And stash a copy on my private server."

"Done.  Godspeed, Agent."

These murderers worshipped God. They yearned to meet Christ as a reward for their sacrifice.  God's done more than enough damage here.

I clamber into the pilot's seat and find that I can barely reach the pedals. 

"Heimdall, control map for a Boeing 747-500.  Pilot's seat perspective.  Project it on both lenses at 30 percent opacity."

_Radio, radio...there!_

"Mayday, mayday, mayday!  This is SwissAir 237 out of LAX.  We have suffered engine loss and are losing altitude.  Please respond."

Vasquez shoves a slightly tipsy looking woman into the chair next to mine.

"Hey there," my new friend purrs.

"Marines," the marshall replies.  "Fighter pilot. I know what it looks like but she's sober enough.  Trust me."

"Thanks, Vasquez.  Get the door?"

My seatmate turns to watch as Vasquez jams a drink cart across the doorframe and locks the casters.  Anyone wanting through will have to climb over it.  

"God I've missed that ass," the Marine chokes.  She puts her hands together and whispers 'thank you' as if it were a prayer.  She's not wrong. Bite-sized as she may be, there was a lot of muscle on display under Vasquez's sweat-slicked blouse.  

"Focus, Lucy!" Vasquez snaps over her shoulder.

"I'm Lucy Lane."

"Alex Danvers.  Charmed. Now help me get this thing landed."

 

* * *

 

 

##  **Lena Luthor**

(L-Tech One, en route to LAX -- Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

(10:04pm, 33,000 feet over Colorado, 200 miles off course)

 

The cabin is crowded.  Thirty, perhaps forty people.  Dirty. Bloodstained. Angry. Each and every one of them pointing a finger at me.

"Killer.

"Monster."

"Bitch."

"Silence!" Aggie Kent bellows.  The strangers cringe and vanish in little puffs of smoke.

I turn my head to look at Jess.  Poor, optimistic Jess. Good enough to believe in me and worry about my health.  Stupid enough to stay with the company. Her empty, half-shattered skull is velcroed in place and Aggie Kent's fingertips are inside the braincase.

"Zeus's balls, this is gross," Aggie groans.

A golden light emanates from inside Jess' skull and little rivers of light follow the veins of Aggie's wrist, fading under her skin.

"Father," she whispers.  "Lend me your patronage, that I might heal.  Iron Queen, Chaos-Bringer, elder of my line...release your cold chains.  Return this soul to me."

A gust of wind whips through the cockpit, carrying a swirl of air that smells like wine and herbs.  Aggie yanks her hands back. I watch as the wind carries bits of bone and ropes and clumps of brain tissue up off the pillows and the seat and the floor.  A cerebellum is assembled before my eyes, knitted with golden threads. A frontal lobe not long after that. Eyes and optical nerves are spun like yarn on a loom.

Once whole, each piece slides back into place and a searing white flash follows.  Finally, all the pieces are there. A woman in a long black gown appears from the shadow near the cockpit, rising from the floor followed by an icy draft.

In her cupped hands, she holds a small, fluttering thing.  Like a sparrow made of light.

"A debt is owed, little one."

"A debt will be paid, I swear it."

The stranger opens her palms and the bird-like creature springs forward, wriggling down Jess's throat and settling in her chest.   At least I think it did. A crimson light from inside Jess' blouse suggests it nested there.

"My head," Jess groans.  

"Jess!" Aggie squeals.  "You're back."

Aggie grabs her wit bloodied hands and smooches Jess's forehead and cheeks, laughing the whole time.

"Did something happen?"  Jess groans.

"You died," Aggie sniffs.  "I hate you for dying."

The stranger turns her gaze to me.  Her eyes are so pale that blue is the wrong word.  Silver. Her crown is woven from roses. Black roses.

"This one should not be here," she declares.  "The shell is months dead. Starved."

"I told you," Jess growls.  

"I am alive, I assure you."

The stranger laughs.

"No, you are not.  Lena Luthor starved herself.  Were this creature only human, she would have begun to rot by now.  Perhaps, though...perhaps there is a way.  It would be a shame, after all these years. We have unfinished business, Badb and I."

Aggie Kent goes pale.

"I know that look.  Hold on to something, Jess," Aggie whispers.

Pain.  There is only pain.  Something inside my body, some parasite, is clawing and gnashing its teeth at the left side of my body.  Another set of teeth and claws are slashing at the right side.

"Neiman!  She who bathes in blood, who perfumes herself with smoke and ash!" the stranger calls.  "Rise."

The left side of my face splits open.  A woman emerges, blood-drenched and nude.  Smoke surrounds her and her face is smeared with dark blue warpaint.  Swirling a finger in midair, she creates a swirl of blood and from it draws an axe, two steel hammers and a series of furs, which she proceeds to wrap around herself.

"Whoa," Aggie murmurs.  "I am _so gay_ right now."

Jess slaps her on the back of the head.

"Badb!  Who dances on spear-points!  Who strikes terror and madness into men!  Rise!"

This time, the pain is on the right.  A woman clad only in a cloak of ravens feathers emerges.  She's practically feral, crouching in the corner, sniffing the air.  In her right hand is a human skull carved in runes and Celtic knots. From the mass of feathers, a huge raven with gleaming red eyes rises and spreads its wings.

The stranger rips the television off the wall and holds it up to my face.

"Anand!  She whose breath ripened the soil, whose loins brought forth heroes and gods and legends.  Whose laughter brings the wind, whose tears fill the rivers. Whose blessings make kings of peasants, warriors of cowards and craftsmen of halfwits.  Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Rise!"

In the reflection, a woman emerges and she is wearing my face.  She wears what looks like a cloak of green velvet over robes of black silk.  In her right hand is a pale staff of polished wood and in her left, a crown.

"Lena Luthor is dead," the stranger declares.  

"Long live Lena Luthor!  Long live The Morrigan!"

 

* * *

 

 

##  **Kara / Venus or Aphrodite**

(Los Angeles, California – Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day)

(33,000 feet over Colorado, 200 miles off course)

(10:21pm)

 

Lena's private jet is no more than an arms-length away now.

I can save her.  I can do this. All I need is to get inside.

Something explodes, turning the midnight sky white-hot and bright as the sun.  As the burn in my eyes fades, I can see I see three limp bodies tumbling towards the earth.

"No!" I scream.

A series of sonic booms behind me make me wheel around.

Apollo stops in front of me.

"I'll help them.  You help your sister."

"What?"

"You didn't know?  Hijacking on her flight.  Save them."

"Lena…"

"Will be fine," he assures me.  "I have her. Airliner is a better first save anyway!"

I look up.  There, at the edge of the atmosphere, ghostly white shapes dance.  Radio and television broadcasts, scattered by the Earth's magnetic field.  I soar up, close as I can get without piercing the bubble.

Now I can make them out.

[This is SwissAir 237 out of LAX.  We have suffered engine loss and are losing altitude.  Please respond.]

That was Alex's voice.

I reach out and stroke the edge of space, dipping my fingers through her words.

_I'm coming, sister._

Diana reaches out to me in my thoughts.

**What can I do, love?**

**Warn your mother,** I tell her.  **I need to put a planeful of innocents somewhere and I need her cooperation.**

**You ask for a great deal, Venus, from me and from my sisters.**

**No one sets foot on the sands without your blessing, love, I swear it.**

I hear her laugh.   In my head and in my heart.

**I know.**

**Very well.  It is your magic after all.  Your veil to part, Aphrodite mine…**

 

* * *

 

##  **Catherine "Cat" Redstone-Grant (** ** _nee_** **Redstone, preferred)**

(CatCo Media, Los Angeles, California – 10 Years After Arrival, Reunion Day+1)

(6:12am)

 

"Run it again," I tell the video editor.  "Focus on the color balance. I want people to cream their panties when they see that place."

He nods.

"Not every day, is it?" he jokes.

"No," I reply, staring at the monitor.  "No, it is not."

I walk out into the studio.  For fifteen years, this has been home.  Even at the top of my field, I could hide my identity.  Catherine Redstone was a drug-addled, one-movie-wonder of a failed actress who wrapped her Corvette around a light post and dropped off the map as far as Hollywood was concerned.

Who was Cat Grant, after all?  

 _Plastic surgery is a blessing from god,_ I remind myself.

The cameraman counts down.

Three.

Two. 

One.

"Good evening," I begin.

"I'm Cat Grant.  This isn't usually the CEO's chair but I'm the boss and I wanted to speak to you, the American people.  There are certain stories that cannot be told.  For a journalist, it's hard to admit, but it's true.  Some things can only be seen.  In that spirit, we are bringing you this exclusive footage.  Cell phone video and video taken from rescue ships in the Aegean sea near Greece."

"As most of you are aware, SwissAir Flight 237 was attacked by right-wing terrorists several hours after takeoff.  I am pleased to announce that except for the terrorists and two crew members, everyone survived.  A federal agent aboard the flight managed to kill the terrorists but they detonated multiple bombs.  The aircraft's engines were destroyed while it was over the pacific with no land for thousands of miles.  As of midnight, the aircraft was presumed lost."

"This morning, we have learned..."

I pause, shake my head and chuckle.

"This is what I mean," I say, removing and folding my glasses.

"See for yourself.  See what some are calling the Miracle of Flight 237."

The first clip is from a teenage girl's cell phone.

 

"Oh god," she whispers.  "We're going to die…"

A woman's voice comes over the intercom.  Hard as granite.

"Everyone, brace for impact!"

The plan strikes something and an instant later, there is static.

 

The next clip is voiced over because the man who shot it was a reporter embedded with the Israeli navy.

 

Dozens of orange lifeboats drift around lazily on blue, glassy waters.  The creak of wood, the leaping of dolphins and the flutter of sails in the background reveal it as the ocean but from the water itself, it might as well be a warm bath.  Luggage bobs like corks. Someone surfaces with a cat carrier in their hands and plunks it into an empty life raft, getting an irritated yowl from the inhabitant.

Not one scrap of the aircraft can be seen.

In the distance, a fleet of warships crewed by spear-wielding soldiers row ever-closer to the lifeboats.  Sails painted cherry-red billow in the tropical breeze.

The camera zooms in and on the bow of one ship, a general can be seen.  She is middle-aged and swarthy and her bare arms show muscle tone any athlete would envy.  On her armor is the same sigil as on Wonder Woman's tiara.  Every single person on the deck behind her is female.

 

The last clip is an interview. 

 

A stunning blonde -- no, more than stunning-- addresses the cameraman.  Behind her, armored Amazons are helping survivors onto the rescue vessels.  One boy stumbles and falls into the water.  The queen dives in and soon surfaces like a spear, holding the boy aloft with one glistening hand fisted tightly in his coat.  She places him back in his mother's arms.  He laughs and reaches his little arms towards the queen, like he wanted to go again.

The camera returns to the subject as she shakes her head at the boys antics.  She is wrapped in steel plate decorated with roses made of dozens of inlaid rubies and in her left hand is a staff shaped like a bouquet wrought out of iron.

"My name is Venus.  Last night, men who worshipped Jesus Christ tried to kill these people.  I saved them.  To those who would kill in your God's name, in the name of a God known only in books and in lectures, know this..."

"Olympus is reborn.  Gods walk the Earth once more in the flesh.  With me stands Minerva, goddess of war and heroes.    Diana, goddess of the hunt and protector of women.  You know her as Wonder Woman.  Bellona, goddess of destruction and battle.  Apollo, god of prophecy.  The Justice League has given us their blessing and we know that others will rally to our cause, heroes both mortal and divine."

"We will show butchers no mercy.  Rapists will speak no excuses.  Bigots will be granted not one inch more.  We will give hate and cruelty no harbor, no home, no safe place."

"Lovers, I will shield your flesh with my own."

"Rebels, I will grease the universe itself to aid your mischief."

"Activists, I will light a passion in your ranks brighter than the sun."

"I am Venus, the queen of Olympus.  To my friends, my acolytes, and my allies, this is my promise.  To my enemies, this is your first and last warning."

 

* * *

 

 

**WE'VE RESCUED THE PLANE!!!**  
  
**At this point, the plot will be a mix of originals and my twists on "Supergirl" TV episodes.  Enjoy!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **MYTHOLOGY NOTE:**  
>  The makeup of the morrigan is always three goddesses but which three varies. I chose Neiman, Anand and Badb because it's a bit too duplicative other wise. Neiman as terror and chaos, Badb as war, death and so on and Macha as war and kings...lacks variety. So I used an alternative version found in _other retellings_ with Anand, who is a Gaelicization of Anu or Danu, the 'mother goddess' of fertility, power, etc. who shows up in similar names all across Europe and who gave her name to the Danube river which also runs across much of Europe. I felt she was a better one for Lena Luthor since she is more the sort who might bestow tech genius on her human shell and since we know that Lillian Luthor is not divine, leaving a very important goddess unaccounted for.
> 
>  **COMICS CANON vs MY CANON NOTE: ******  
> Men cannot set foot on the Amazonian homeworld of Themiscrya. Hence the water rescue. The veil protecting it is controlled by Olympian gods, among them Aphrodite. That's why Kara needed Diana's permission so that Alex could make a water landing. It also doesn't allow machines in after that whole issue with the German soldiers in World War I (in the movie) so not only did the plane dissolve, Alex is going to have to replace that very expensive cell phone!


	11. Her Majesty's Subjects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS TIME ON "THE EX-WIVES":  
> Los Angeles comes to grips with their new patron, the wrong sort take notice, Alex faces consequences, there's an app for everything now, Lena has a sleepover, and an orgy is desperately in need of spice.

##  **Kara / Venus or Aphrodite**

(Los Angeles, California – Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day +1) 

(5:18am) 

 

Shoving the last of the breakfast burrito in my mouth, I groan.

"S'amazing."

I gulp down halfway-sizzling, savory, _hot_ food and feel warmth spread through me.

"I could go for a burrito," the would-be carjacker suggests.

Would-be food truck-jacker.  I was waiting for Robbie, like every morning, meaning that this cretin didn't get his gun pulled out far enough to point it at anyone else.

Now he is ruining my snack.

I slam my boot down, just above his crotch.  I'd noticed he had a half-erection and kept leering up at me from the stool I cuffed him to.  All that blood surging in his _vena cava_ down towards his dick just got shaken like a paint can.  The mother of all bruises will form by sundown.   

"Jesus!  Fucking who-"

He stops talking when I upend the Inferno Sauce on his head.

"You done?" I snarl.

The flames in my eyes cast dancing blue reflection all over the slick, runny red salsa.  It has been eons since a human has seen Kaos in person. It is the crackle and thunder of reality, the friction that gathers in the spaces between atoms, in the spaces too tiny for any machine, any microscope, to ever pierce.  

Semele saw the gods as they were -- and burned -- even when it was nothing more profound than Jupiter looking for a second fuck.  

The last person who was one of us _angry_ was Mars himself and before him, I suppose it was Saturn. 

This pill-popping moron will be the first to survive it.

"Yes."

"Yes…"

"Yes ma'am?"

"No."

He shudders.

"Yes…"

"Yes, your worship."

"Better."

I reach into my back pocket and grab some bills.

"How much, Robbie?  Including the hot sauce bottle."

He starts to shake his head.

"Uh-uh.  You're a small businessman and you deserve it.  I'm not getting a meal for free just because this asshole tried to rob you."

"Besides, if you go under, I might have to steal Janey from you…" I tease.

His wife blushes.  She's the color of a well-toasted marshmallow, eight months pregnant with twins -- or triplets, they're not telling -- and even before she was pregnant, her skin gleamed and sparkled like gold leaf.    The legend was true. Just as promised, El Dorado was golden and gleaming and glorious and hidden in a hillside in the jungles of east Mexico but it was never a city.  That was the lie.

Janey's probably straight -- and Diana can be jealous -- but roommates never killed anybody and a couple of small humans running around would really help fill the mansion up.

She looks up at me, then to him.   She whispers at her husband in Spanish.

I count the bills out and hold them out to Janey, knowing she'll take them and Robbie won't.  Not while the bruise to his pride is so fresh.

"You knew," she murmurs.  "You knew what I said."

"Spanish is a romance language," I tease.  "Comes from Latin. Who do you think taught _Latin_ to Romulus?"

"I don't understand."

"A mother knows her children's ways," I reply.  "And their children's. And their children's children."

Robbie shakes his head and puts a fresh bottle of hot sauce out.

"So the non-bullshit answer is...it's magic."

"Magic," I agree.

I slap some spare change onto the counter.

"Have a nice weekend, kids.  Take her somewhere nice."

Janey gets up -- no small thing, in her condition -- and examines the coins.

"Gold?" she asks.

"Mmm," I purr.  "Pirate booty. A Denarius from the wreck of the _Agetus._ A raider's vessel sunk off Sicily by the Imperial Navy."

"What happened?" Robbie asks.

"No idea," I admit.  "I was floating in the void. Three-quarters dead.  According to Wikipedia, the wreck dates back to around the time a skinny guy started preaching in Galilee."

"How did you get it?"

"Neptune is dead.  As is our custom, his domain passed to his heirs."

_Which is why I killed the sick fucker's sons.  As I did most of Jupiter's, all of Mars' and nearly everything on Olympus with a prick between its legs._

Neptune's daughters were only too glad to help me purge the males of their bloodline.  How gleefully they held their brothers' throats out. I think the boys thought it was a game.  

What knife could cut the son of the mighty Neptune?  

A knife made of the screams of dying stars, the frigid claws of black holes and a woman's rage, a woman who left everyone she loved in the middle of a massacre.

Sparing even Apollo's life was an impulsive move.  I pulled the nymph from his arms and banished her to Earth with a Word.  I had heard the stories of his ego. He was no Jupiter, but he was hardly innocent.  

In his eyes, I saw fear I'd never seen in a mortal's.  He was, just for an instant, the younger twin...the brother who Di remembered sheltering from their mortal stepfather's drunken fists before they were uplifted.  The only brother of an amazing woman. I spared the god because I saw fragments of a man in him. I feared Diana's tears.

Not that sweet little Janey needs to hear it.  

I doubt the others know what happened in those hours when I disappeared during the battle of Olympus.  Apollo has lied for me, for whatever reason. Claimed his scar was from Mars, not from me.

Janey's voice snaps me out of it.  

"I don't understand."

"His wife is the mistress of the oceans now.  All shipwrecks are known to the sea and thus, to Salacia.  I want you back here tomorrow, all right? A coin a week to put my breakfast on retainer.  Babies cost money, and I want to make sure..."

"Alicia, Petra, Joaquin," Janey murmurs.

"I want to be sure their parents can care for them.  The _Morai_ know their names now.  They will be watched over.  Their threads will be measured long, woven tight, and kept safe.  I assure you, they will want for nothing."

Janey's eyes go wide.  Robbie grins.

I let my armor fade to smoke, then stuff my hands in my pockets and start towards the studio's front doors.

"Toodles!"

Janey's prayers of thanks are to her God, of course, not me.  At least they're in Latin.

 

* * *

**Alex Danvers**

(C-5 "Galaxy" Cargo Aircraft, CIA-assigned -- Arrival +10 years, Reunion +1 Day) 

(50,000 feet over the Atlantic) 

(1:18pm Universal Time, 5:18am Los Angeles) 

 

Nia is shivering beside me.  She took _her_ jacket off and put it around Gertrude's carrier and as a result, I had to loan her mine.

"It's bad," she mumbles.  "Isn't it?"

"What?" I ask.

"They're not going to let me go, are they?"

I shrug.

"You and Gertrude both got a dose.  If someone's planning on putting that dog in a lab, I will _personally_ kill them.  Then I will shove the corpse of whoever gave the order up their commanding officer's ass."

"R-r-right," she stammers.

"And you're kind of cute too," I joke.  "Just in a people way, not a dog way."

"Oh," Nia mumbles.  "Thanks."

"No problem, kid."

"I'm not that much younger than you."

"Yeah, sorry."

Something in her guts shifts and the gurgle is loud enough for me to hear and Nia doubles over.  

"You OK?" I ask her.

"Yeah," she huffs.  "I survived bottom surgery on seven days of Vicodin.  I can survive this."

_Damn._

I was a doctor before I was a spy.  I have so many questions about which treatments Nia underwent.  Whoever helped her transition was a surgical virtuoso and her parents must have been supportive.  The typical outcome for a trans kid in small-town America isn't 500,000 followers on YouTube and a scandalous Instagram that receives the occasional nude proposal via email.  Her mental health alone is amazing.  Nia's course is the one others should be modeled on.

"Good.  Because I may have to get creative."

"What?"

I glance at the Agency personnel upfront. 

"If I do something mean, play along, okay?"

One of them -- the female case officer -- keeps smiling at me.  Everyone who works for the company knows she was on the team that dug up Bin Laden. 

She shook my hand like my dad did and _smiled_ in the same way my mom did when I passed the boards in med school.  

_Crap!  I need to call mom and dad._

It's the operators guarding her who worry me.  

They're both young, twenty at most.  I've learned to sniff out why people joined.  I think _they_ joined to keep away the scary brown people.  Meaning I just pissed in their cereal by revealing that the newest terrorist cartel in town is Christian, white, and local.

This means that they're probably about as happy with me as Mike Pence right now and he went on TV to cover for the _terrorists_.   

I saw it on the TVs on base.

He dropped my civilian identity on Fox News without a twinge of guilt. A lot of strong language was used.  Words like "hysterical" and "slut" and "deviant". 

Strangely, neither "traitor" or "irresponsible" came up when he destroyed my cover while I was in hostile territory.  

If I didn't have to go home to Skylar, I would've disappeared into Athen's alleyways and never been seen again.

Maggie must have found the how-to packet at the back of the hotel's fridge because I got a text and a selfie from her and Skylar not even one hour after I sent her my SOS.  No one is going to touch my little girl when she's at a sleepover at her Auntie Minerva's house. I'll just have to hope Maggie won't upgrade with all those Amazons around her.

The last image I got from the home security camera was a bunch of sisterfuckers, Confederate flag-wavers and true believers with MAGA hats and AR-15s bursting in the front door to find an empty house.

They knew where I lived but not a living soul knew I was going on vacation with Maggie.

A mixtape of moans I slapped together from porn and my phone sex with Vicki drew them deeper in, making sure they fanned out to find us.  A dozen, and then more, were across the threshold.  I pushed the 'ignite' button on the web page without a twitch. 

My little toys sprayed them with homemade napalm, a personal recipe.  Lower concentration, low enough to not set off any neighbor's alarms for gas leaks.  Slow burning and lower temperature but no easier to escape. The thermite charge that destroyed the computer and covered my electronic tracks sparked the napalm.

Men who came to kill my girl and my lover died screaming.   To me, it felt like ordering tacos for date night. 

As soon as I saw the security doors lock, I knew they were trapped. So I put my headphones in and fired up the _L Word_ reboot. They probably didn't die until the first episode ended.

_I think I need a new job._

 

* * *

##  **Lena Luthor / Anand, Badb and Neiman**

(Chicago, Illinois – Arrival +10 years, Reunion Day +1) 

 

I push my eyes open despite how much the light hurts.

"Hey, boss."

Aggie Kent's smiling face is waiting for me.  She's sipping a steaming cup of something that smells like hot chocolate.  She opens the thermos and pours a second cup.

"Where am I?"

"My sister's room.  Well, _our_ room.  Her bed.  She's still in LA."

"Oh, that explains a lot."

"How so?" she asks.

"It figures you grew up in a room like this," I shrug.  "It's...

Casting my eyes around, I see crayon drawings that Clark or Bruce must have laminated pinned to a corkboard with the word 'Masterpieces' on it.  Aggie seems to have tried to bury them in charcoals and watercolors.

"You didn't tell me you were an artist," I groan.  "Were you the captain of your softball team? Debate team?  Prom Queen, too?"

Aggie snorts.

"No, yes and yes.  The captain of the softball team…"

She blushes.

"There are some girls so lovely that even _I_ cannot look at them for too long without burning."

I laugh with her.

"So the debate team?"

"Oh, that was a cute _boy_.  We never clicked, not really.  Though I did end up switching to his sister earlier this year.  Okay, technically it was a trade with Martha because she wasn't sure what to do about Annika's advances.  My sister's straight.  Guess there had to be _one_ in the family."

"You heartbreaker, you."

Aggie shrugs.

"Like dad, like daughter."

"Which one?  Sam'ael or Apollo?"

Her eyes narrow.

"Bruce and Clark," she reminds me.  "But in this case, Bruce. Before he met dad, he was a player."

Someone raps their knuckles at the door.

"Aggie?"

The baritone on the other side of the oak isn't Apollo's.   Meaning that it belongs to Bruce. The Dark Angel. The devil himself.  Despite all I've learned since I hired Aggie, I am afraid. I was churched like I was tutored; expensively and extensively by unforgiving men who I could never be good enough.  John Calvin's teachings haunted my childhood as much as Lillian's frown.

_Fuck it._

"A moment!" I call out.

"Where are my clothes?" I hiss at Aggie.

She nods to her closet.

"We...uh...I wasn't comfortable with that.  Once we got you all reassembled, I had Bruce tuck you in.  Apollo's close to Diana and…"

Aggie sighs.

"Clark seeing you naked could get complicated.  Bruce, not as much."

"Why?"

"Diana likes to be the only one seeing her lovers nude.  When I say 'likes'..."

She makes air quotes.

"I mean there are Renaissance masterpieces of murders she committed when men saw her naked.  Wasn't going to take the chance that her brother seeing you like that was as bad.  I mean, I _like_ my dads."

"Oh.  Yeah. I remember that now."

"I'll give you a minute," Aggie sighs.

"Drink the hot chocolate though.  I think maybe I'll make performance cooking my domain.  My first act as a goddess will be to have Paula Deen killed and to have Guy Fieri clapped in irons," she sniffs.

I've stared at Titian's _Diana and Actaeon_ , on a business trip to Scotland when I was nine.   It was the only one I took with Lionel and Lex but not Lillian.  I suppose our two-day jaunt to Ireland was to see my mother's family.  That must have been her grave we visited.

Back when I saw nine, I just saw a dog chasing a deer, a deer running away from a woman with her hand over her breasts.  I wouldn't learn the backstory until college. I never imagined that I would meet Diana. If the heavens had opened and told me that Diana would see fourteen-year-old me as competition, I would have laughed in God's face.

Sometimes I wonder if Lionel knew, in some way.  He died before puberty really hit me but he never once pointed me to boys and when Lillian had a meltdown about me going to a STEM camp or poetry slam or a softball game instead of an etiquette camp, he took my side.

 _Mercy Graves can protect her from anything_ , he'd say.

 _Not from sin_ , mother would say.

 _A Luthor must know the whole of herself,_ he'd insist.  _If we don't let her understand everything and see everything?  She will be a coward. If she can't face a new idea, how can we ever hope for her to stand up and do what needs to be done?_

Eventually, they would be so deep into it that we could sneak away and Lex would use his phone to call my chauffeur.

The answer was 'she wasn't a Luthor' but Lillian never said it until dad was dead.  

Perhaps only a heart attack separates me from Lex.  I would have been in the office next to him, if Lionel had his way.  I was being groomed for COO or CTO and Lex for the CEO spot, which was its own kindness.  I can draw a jet engine on a napkin and I can turn a hundred temps and an unwired warehouse with no internet into a functional office for L-Corp West, but I could never schmooze like Lex.

The suit I wore is in here, sealed in a garment bag with blood pooling at the bottom.  Along with it are several sundresses, two bathrobes and one three-piece suit. They're not going to be a perfect fit, not until they are taken in, but I'm somewhat flattered by what must have been Aggie's exaggerations of my curves when trying to figure out the size.

The sky blue sundress with the burgundy stitching on the sleeves calls to me somehow.  I've no idea why. I pick the sandals that seem like the best match and slide them on. When I bend down to work the clasps, a locket tumbles out from between my breasts, dangling in the middle of my vision.

It's nothing but a braided leather cord with three charms: a skull, a raven, and a crown.  The crown is blood red and cool to the touch and despite being wrought iron, it's light as a scrap of paper.  The raven and the skull are heavy and almost painfully hot in my hands. Heavier than such tiny things have any right to be.

 _Can it be?_ I wonder.

 _It is, Anand,_ a woman answers.

"Christ!"

"You're in my head…"

_As are you._

"And I'm talking to myself.  But I know I'm not because your thoughts are different.  I know...it's like..."

I snap my fingers over and over.

"A smell.  Like a perfume."

_We are not painted whores!_

_Nieman!  Enough! How many men have you taken on the battlefield, before the rage in you was cold?  How many?_

_I would rather not answer the dead, Badb._

_Nor I a lunatic!  But we are not Anand's enemies.  We are the midnight, the dawn and the sunset, in case you have forgotten._

"The maiden, the matron and the crone.  A trinity."

_Precisely...crone._

_Badb!_

Nieman's laugh rings through my head.  It's a scary laugh, no question. Hollywood should record that sound and re-use it for every on-screen villain between now and the end of time.

 _You did not feel Venus's skin,_ Badb replies.  _When she took us, your mind was always flitting around some battlefield or another.  But I paid attention!_

Badb's personality reminds me of twenty year old, goth, post-Kara me far more than I'd like to admit.  Perhaps she has her own tale of heart-shattering lost love. What makes someone apply for the job of death goddess, anyway?

_Next to her, Nini, we are all as beautiful as a burned-out funeral pyre._

I choke on a giggle at Nieman's angry bellow in my head.

"Well," I sigh.  "This'll be fun."

Aggie is waiting for me when I open the door.  She hands over my phone.

"Call for you, boss."

"Hello?"

"Lena?  Are you all right?"

"Yes, Kara.  I think I will be."

"Can I see you, please?"

"Of course."

Aggie taps my shoulder.

"Little red button," she hisses.

I press it.

Before I realize it's happening, I'm falling.  Kara catches me. My hair slithers over her fingers and hers falls over my face like an avalanche of perfumed gold.  Her arm behind my back keeps me up while she winds the other hand into mine.  Seeing as how there's an unbroken skylight above me, I must have only fallen a few inches. Seeing as how it's mid-afternoon, here, I moved a couple timezones to the west.

Los Angeles.

"Thanks for coming, Lena."

"What the fuck, Kara?"

She glances over to the table.

"Siri, text Aggie."

"What should I say?"

"Tell her the app worked."

_The app?  A fucking cellphone app teleported me here?_

"Sent."

"Let me show you around," Kara offers.   "We sent the rowdy guests home. I want this to be special."

She cracks open a door made of lacquered redwood and leads me into a ballroom.  Pillows and chaises and what must be air mattresses disguised with Egyptian cotton sheets line the room.  Beanbags stick out like weeds on the oak floor.

On every soft surface and on half of the hard ones, couples and throuples and more are fucking and snuggling and eating and drinking.  An errant bra or two hangs on someone's shoulder or a thong around someone's neck but besides me, no one is wearing clothes.

"This is an orgy, Kara!"

"This is the _appetizer,_ my love.  Though if you want to pop something in," Kara purrs, her sapphire eyes sweeping the room.

"I won't tell anyone.  Diana will huff and puff but she'll forgive you.  Minerva will just shake her head. And the make-up sex?"

Kara grins.  

She nods towards a red-headed man.

"I would recommend Will, if you're curious."

 _Is that thing normal?_ I wonder.

A perk of lesbianism is that I have no way to know.  The copper-skinned woman kneeling between his thighs has her face screwed into a stiff, tense mask of sinew and skin.  He's in her mouth and her hand is strumming between her legs.  I'm not surprised at him, at his head falling back as the breath escapes his lungs.  It's _her_ that confuses me.  She's doing all the work and yet her panting suggests she's getting something adequate, if not exceptional, out of the arrangement.

"I'm not ready," I admit.

"Okay, babe. I'll take you upstairs, make sure you're settled in with us.  Wine?"

I nod.

Kara snaps her fingers.  A server appears, pours two glasses, and disappears.

"Where am I?"

"Phoenix, I call it.  Outside San Francisco.  Earthquake ruined it back in 1906.  I spruced it up so we'd have a home.  Besides Taegtus, that is."

"Taygetus?"

"Call it Mount Olympus 2.0."

I slide my arm in hers as we climb the stairs.  It's reflex.

"Who's we?  Exactly how big a crowd are you throwing me in to, Kara?"

"I love Diana, Minerva, Bellona."

Kara glances over to me.

"And you.  Always you."

"So five."

"Five."

"Will they...like me?  Diana didn't."

"You'll be fine."

She places a gleaming key into an antique lock.

The room is pitch black.

"I'm back.  She's here," Kara whispers.

The sounds of suckling and the rustling of silk trail off.

"Delicious," growls a woman's voice.

Her lean face is illuminated by a flicker from the flame where a human's eyes would be.  The flame is white-hot, crimson and sparking, like a sword under a smith's hammer.

Long fingers cradle my right hand and raise it to a pair of lips.  I look down into a pair of eyes silvery and bright as the moon. Tears sparkle down her cheeks like drops of quicksilver.

"We meet again, Lena."

"Diana?"

"Mmm," she replies.  "I'll have you saying my name with more flair before long."

"Minerva?" Kara calls out.

"I'm here," someone grunts.  The woman with the fiery eyes throws her head back in a silent scream.  The red hot-depths of her throat cast even more light on a bed. Fire seeps through her veins and I can see her sinewy frame clench up as she comes.

The voice is deep and rough and it hooks deep in my core and shakes, sending a shiver up my back and making me whine.  If the orgasm I just saw was any indication, the woman in the shadow behind her is as sexy as her voice.

"They do this sometimes," Kara jokes.  "Minerva and Bellona. War and Destruction.  Bottom and top. Domme and sub. That kind of thing."

"Uh, okay?"

I've never been so nervous in my life.

Something miraculous happens.  A hand tugs at the hem of my dress.

"May I?"

It's Diana.  

"Yes," I croak.  "Give me your hands."

She complies and I pull her to her feet.

"You first.  Don't make a sound."

I kneel, breathing deep.

_Strange she smells so...ordinary._

I don't know why I expected lilacs or mulled wine with blueberry-stuffed lemon tarts or something but what I smell is a horny woman.  Distinct from Kara, to be sure...but with my eyes closed, I can forget that I'm about to eat out a goddess.

After a deep breath, I do something I've dreamt about since I was twelve years old.


	12. CODEX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter will include reference information to help my readers keep all these divine sheniganans and sexy goddesses straight.

#  **Cast of Characters**

 

  

 

 

# **Los Angeles ("National City" in DC Comics)**

   
  
---  
  
 

### **Character**

 

| 

 

### **Divine  
Identity**

 

| 

 

### **Heritage**

 

| 

 

### **Pantheon / Worship**

 

| 

 

### **Domains**

 

| 

 

### **Symbols**

 

| 

 

### **Patronage**

 

| 

 

### **Notes**

   
  
**Kara Danvers** | 

Venus (Roman) 

Aphrodite (Greek)

| Goddess | Olympian (Greek/Roman) | Love, beauty, pleasure, and passion | Myrtles, roses, sparrows, doves, and swans | Prostitutes, lovers | 

Links to Astarte, Innana, and Ishtar in Sumeria and Phonencia

In Laconia (including Sparta) and Kythia was a warrior goddess  
  
**Alex Danvers** |   | Human | Atheist |   |   |   |   

   
  
**Maggie Sawyer** |   | Human | 

Roman Catholicism (cultural, not practiced)

|   |   |   |    
**Lena Luthor** | The Morrigan  
  
(Badb, Anand, and Neiman) | Goddess(es) | 

Tuatha De Danann

(Irish)

| War, battle, fate, power, and sovereignty |   |   | 

Triad of goddesses sharing one name in the historical record.

   
  
| Badb |        | Fear, war, death | Crows |   | 

Badb means "crow" in old Irish, and she is often depicted as a crow over the battlefield.  
  
Battlefields were sometimes called the "garden of Badb"  
  
Anand |   | Nature, power, motherhood |   |   | 

Anand is an Irish name for Danu.  In other parts of Britain, she is called "Gentle Annie" in hopes to appease her  
  
"Danu" (roughly "river") or names like it occur widely in ancient European myth and archaeology.  May be a common name for a mother goddess in a shared Proto-Indo-European language or may represent tales of one goddess  
  
Neiman |   | Havoc and chaos on the battlefield |   |   | 

In the epic of Tai Bo Cualinge, she turns the forces of Queen Medb upon themselves, costing them the battle  
  
**Sam Arias** | 

Bellona (Roman) 

Enyo (Greek)

| Goddess | Olympian (Greek/Roman) | Destruction, terror in war, bloodshed |   |   | In Greek tradition, she is the daughter of Ares.  
  
In Roman tradition, she was the wife of Mars.  
  
(Strong parallels to Kali in Hinduism)  
**Maxwell Lord** |   | Human | Atheist |   |   |   |   

   
  
**Rhea** | 

Cybele  (Roman) 

Rhea (Greek)

| Titaness | Olympian (Greek/Roman) |   | Lion, chariot, cornucopia |   | Daughter of Cronus and Gaia, the original god of the sky and goddess of the earth.  
  
 

# **New York ("Metropolis" in DC Comics)**

   
  
 

### **Character**

 

| 

 

### **Divine  
Identity**

 

| 

 

### **Heritage**

 

| 

 

### **Pantheon / Worship**

 

| 

 

### **Domains**

 

| 

 

### **Symbols**

 

| 

 

### **Patronage**

 

| 

 

### **Notes**

   
  
**Clark Kent** | Apollo (Roman or Greek) | God | Olympian (Greek/Roman) | Sun, medicine, archery, music and dance, many others | Lyre, laurel wreath, python, raven, swan, bow and arrow | Seafarers, foreigners, fugitives and refugees, young people | Credited with inventing archery alongside his sister Diana/Artemis.  
**Lex Luthor** | Lugus | God | 

Tuatha De Danann

(Irish)

| Sun, skill and war, many others |   |   | Much like Apollo in  Greek / Roman myth, Lugus has  _way too_ _many_ domains and patronages.  He's a Gary Stu.  
**Lillian Luthor** |   |   | 

 

|   |   |   |    
  
 

# **Chicago ("Gotham" in DC Comics)**

   
  
 

### **Character**

 

| 

 

### **Divine  
Identity**

 

| 

 

### **Heritage**

 

| 

 

### **Pantheon / Worship**

 

| 

 

### **Domains**

 

| 

 

### **Symbols**

 

| 

 

### **Patronage**

 

| 

 

### **Notes**

   
  
**Bruce Wayne** | Samael (Lucifer) | Angel or Fallen Angel | Judaism & Christianity | Dawn, light (as an angel)  
  
Temptation, evil, lies, sin  
(as a fallen angel) |   |   | 

The Roman name for the planet Venus was "Lucifer," and the traditional link between his identity and Satan's in **Isaiah 14:12** in the King James is now considered a poor translation of the term "shining one" into a proper name.  
  
References in **I Enoch 86-90** and  **II Enoch 29:3-4** also mention him as a fallen angel, but this book is apocryphal in all but Greek Orthodox.

Satan is not mentioned in the Garden of Eden in either Jewish or Christian versions of the bible.  
  
Jewish depictions of "Satan" include the angel advising God on the nature of humans in the book of Job and the as an "adversary" given as an obstacle to the Jewish people. "Satan" translates to "adversary" or "accuser" and is derived from a verb "to obstruct."  
  
Modern Judaism rejects the concept of a supernatural personification of evil.    
  
**Kate Kane** | Azrael | Angel or Fallen Angel | Judaism, Christianity, and Islam | Destruction and renewal |   |   | 

Identified in Jewish mysticism as the Angel of Death.

Azrael does not appear in the Christian bible.  
  
In Islam, an archangel of death who (along with subordinates) takes the souls god indicates to heaven.

   
  
**Joker** | Cain | Human (cursed) | 

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

|   |   |   | The first human to commit murder, cursed to walk the Earth forever.  
**Harley Quinn** | Lilith | Human (witch) | Judaism, Christianity, and Islam | Sexual wantonness, monsters, witchcraft |   |   | 

In Jewish folklore is the first wife of Adam, created from clay as he was rather than a rib as Eve was. Refused to be subservient and escaped the Garden, repeatedly evading angels sent to capture her.  
  
Created a race of monsters and demons after mating with the archangel Samael.  
  
First of the "lilim" or "lilitu", a type of demon in Mesopotamian folklore.  
  
In literature or art, typically a highly sexualized demon.  
  
**Pamela Isley** | Asherah (Queen of Heaven) | Goddess | Pre-monotheist religion of ancient Hebrew-speaking tribes |   | Asherah poles (sacred trees), walnuts, myrtles, pomegranates |   | 

Wife of Yahweh, oldest of the gods and supreme goddess, married to Yahweh, similar to Hera /Juno in Greek or Roman tradition.  
  
Extensive archaeological evidence of her worship in ancient Hebrew tribes exists in the form of writings, cultic objects and statues.  
  
Following the advent of monotheistic Judaism, it appears that worship persisted for hundreds of years because the planting of her sacred trees is trees was prohibited by law no fewer than  **three times** :

**Deuteronomy 16:21-22**

**Judges 6:25**

**I Kings  14:23**  
  
**Selina Kyle** | Sekhmet | Goddess | Egyptian | Warfare, slaughter, healing | Sun disk, lioness |   | 

Distinct from Bastet or Menhit (other cat goddesses) in Egyptian religion.  
  
Titles include "Mistress of Dread" "One Before Whom Evil Trembles" and "Lady of Slaughter".  
  
After battles, celebrations were held to pacify her.  
  
In the origin story, her breath formed the desert.

In the myth about the end times, she was sent to destroy Ra's enemies and proceeded in her rage to slaughter most of humanity.

She was tricked into drinking red-tinted beer which resembled blood in order to contain her.


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